AAAS IF/ THEN Ambassador & Adjunct Instructor
School of International Service, American University
Davina P. Durgana, PhD is an award-winning international human rights statistician who has developed leading global models to assess risk and vulnerability to modern slavery. Durgana is a report co-author and Senior Statistician on the Global Slavery Index of the Minderoo Foundation’s Walk Free Initiative.
She is the American Statistical Association’s 2016 Statistical Advocate of the Year, a committee member of Statistics without Borders, and a Forbes Top 30 Under 30 in Science for 2017 for her work on statistical modeling, human security theory, and human trafficking. Durgana has also recently been announced as an inaugural IF/Then Ambassador working to encourage women to pursue STEM fields with the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Durgana is Assistant Professor of Sustainable Development at SIT Graduate Institute in D.C. where she served as Lead Faculty on the Inclusive and Human Security Graduate Certificate program with the Institute for Inclusive Security. Durgana was selected as a Google Fellow for Technology and Social Change for her work in Human Trafficking and Technology.
She was also awarded with the Trafficking in America Task Force Award for Service for her contributions to the Anti-Trafficking Field in the United States and was named as a Disruption Awards Foundation Fellow for 2018. She serves on several expert groups for the United Nations, the Department of Justice, and the National Science Foundation.
In 2015 she received the University Award for Outstanding Scholarship at the Graduate Level from American University where she received her PhD in International Relations with Distinction. She received her Master’s degrees in Paris, France while studying human trafficking at the Sorbonne and the American University of Paris, and her Bachelor’s degree at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs.