Laura Edelson is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Northeastern University and the former Chief Technologist of the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice. Laura studies online political communication and develops methods to identify inauthentic content and activity. Her research has powered reporting on social media ad spending in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Atlantic. Prior to her current time in academia, Laura was a software engineer for Palantir and Factset. During her time in industry, her work focused on applied machine learning and big data.