Portfolio & Research

Rowan
Cahill

Senior Undergraduate at Wesleyan University studying Government and Computer Science. Research assistant at the Wesleyan Media Project's DeltaLab, focused on computational analysis of political advertising.

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Rowan Cahill
B.A. Government & Computer Science, 2026
Wesleyan University · Middletown, CT
Research: political advertising, computational social science
Academic Record
01

Education

2022 – 2026
Wesleyan University
Bachelor of Arts — Government & Computer Science (Double Major)
Middletown, CT Varsity Men's Crew NESCAC All-Academic 2024, 2025 Empacher-IRCA Scholar Athlete 2024, 2025 Div. III National Champion, 2024
2018 – 2022
The Brooklyn Latin School
IB Diploma & NYS Diploma
Brooklyn, NY High Honors (Top 5%) International Baccalaureate Model UN
Professional Experience
02

Experience

Sept. 2024 – Present Middletown, CT
Research Assistant
Wesleyan Media Project — DeltaLab
  • Works in DeltaLab, the computational analysis arm of the nation's largest political advertising tracking project.
  • Codes language analysis models to assess patterns in advertising using the country's largest social media and television political advertising datasets.
Summer 2023 Liberty Island, NY
Volunteer Ranger
National Park Service
  • Works independent shifts with the Interpretation and Visitor Services Department.
  • Staffs assigned ranger posts including museums and information centers; serves as an emergency assistance contact.
July 2021 Brooklyn, NY
Summer Intern
Kings County District Attorney's Office
  • Selected through a competitive process as one of ~30 summer interns for a four-week paid internship.
  • Interviewed with attorneys, detectives, and DA Eric Gonzalez; learned about prosecution functions and case workflow.
Work & Research
03

Projects

This Website!
rowancahill.com

Built from scratch with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Features a custom animated day/night toggle which defaults to user's device settings. Hosted on GitHub Pages.

HTML CSS JavaScript Chart.js GitHub Pages
Senior Thesis
How online spaces are reshaping the politics, attitudes, and behaviors of young men

Investigates whether online ecosystems are reshaping young American men's cultural attitudes in ways that carry political consequences using the General Social Survey and a targeted poll from the Young Men Research Project, an algorithm audit of Instagram Reels, and an analysis of over 8.5 million livestream chat messages on Kick.

Writing Survey Analysis Python R
Online Archive →
Wesleyan Media Project
VLM Analysis of Trump & Harris 2024 Campaign Ads

Applied vision-language models to analyze how Trump and Harris were visually framed in each other's campaign advertisements using WMP data. Tuned vision parameters (top-k, temperature) to assess their impact on model behavior.

VLM Python WMP Data
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Wesleyan Media Project
Decrypting Trump 2024 Facebook UTM Codes

Investigated previously unexplored campaign tracking codes from Facebook ads to reveal microtargeting patterns and audience segmentation. Used Python and BigQuery to parse ad metadata via OCR-based text scraping.

Python BigQuery OCR
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Course Project
Fight Club — Web Application

Designed and implemented a web-based application using PHP, MySQL, and JavaScript, simulating anonymous match-based interactions and data logging.

PHP MySQL JavaScript
GitHub →
Conference Poster
2024 Election Advertising & Asian American Voters

Visual research poster analyzing how political ads in the 2024 election cycle strategically targeted Asian American demographics across platforms.

Ad Data Political Science
Poster →
Get In Touch

Let's connect.

Open to research collaborations, internships, and opportunities for 2026.

Email LinkedIn GitHub rowancahill.com