Area of Expertise
When Robyn Smith joined the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia in 2023, she embarked on a new career path, redirecting her analytical expertise from the field of astronomy to consumer finance. In her role as a data scientist in the Consumer Finance Institute (CFI), Robyn is supporting the collaboration between the CFI and the Research Department on a new initiative called CREED, the Center for the REstoration of Economic Data.
Her work involves developing methods for digitizing historical documents, tables, and maps in bulk to unlock data that currently are not easily accessible. This will allow researchers to study economic trends and policy impacts at finer levels of geographic detail and over a larger span of time. She is specifically interested in the ways laws, policies, and systemic bias influence residential composition and wealth accumulation in Philadelphia and other major cities. With her prior experience synthesizing data and building models, Robyn is the first to admit that she enjoys working with intricate data and solving challenging problems.
Robyn has a Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of Maryland, College Park, and a B.S. in physics from Drexel University.