New York Times expands data journalism team with three reporters; Fuller, Hwang and Rich join current team members Pallaro and Gebeloff to enhance data-driven reporting across beats

Andrea Fuller, Irena Hwang and Steven Rich join as data reporters. Read more in this note from Jeremy Singer-Vine.

We’re thrilled to announce three new hires for the Data Journalism team, which collaborates with desks throughout the newsroom to produce compelling, data-driven reporting.

Andrea Fuller, Irena Hwang and Steven Rich are joining current team members Bianca Pallaro and Rob Gebeloff, expanding the number of stories and topics we can cover. They’ll look for opportunities to use data reporting, computer automation and statistical analysis to invigorate and inform our coverage across a variety of beats.

Andrea Fuller joins the team this week as a data reporter based in New York. She comes from The Wall Street Journal, where she has worked since 2014 as a member of the investigations and data teams.

Andrea is an award-winning journalist who has illuminated the ways elite colleges load graduate students with debt they cannot repay, investigated investors’ charitable giving, and reported on how Silicon Valley startups flout federal regulations. At The Times, she will work closely with the Washington bureau.

Previously, Andrea worked as a data reporter for Gannett Digital, The Center for Public Integrity and The Chronicle of Higher Education. She is a graduate of Stanford University.

Irena Hwang will join the team in March as a data reporter based in New York, where she’ll bring her background in science journalism to a variety of stories related to science, climate and health.

Irena comes to The Times from the investigative newsroom ProPublica, where she developed computational pipelines to identify and quantify issues in food safety, drug manufacturing and maternal health. As part of a team examining global pandemic preparedness in the wake of Covid-19, Irena adapted a peer-reviewed epidemiological model to monitor changes in epidemic risk, and used machine learning to identify deforestation patterns that could give rise to Ebola spillover events.

Prior to ProPublica, she worked at NPR, The Associated Press and The Dallas Morning News. Irena completed a Ph.D. in electrical engineering at Stanford University, where she developed algorithms for analyzing genomic sequencing data.

Steven Rich will join the team in March as a data reporter based in Washington, D.C., and working primarily on our National coverage. He comes to The Times after a dozen years as an investigative data reporter for The Washington Post.

While at The Post, Steven’s work spanned nearly every beat. He helped to build a Pulitzer Prize–winning database of fatal police shootings, to map unsolved homicides in major cities and to examine the spread of fentanyl into and around the country. He was also part of a team that successfully sued for the disclosure of data on every prescription pain pill shipment in the United States.

Steven served three terms on the board of Investigative Reporters and Editors, where he is still an active member. He is a graduate of Virginia Tech and the University of Missouri.