The Charles Koch Foundation has awarded $5.4 million to Claremont Graduate University’s computational justice lab, which uses data and social sciences to assist and inform efforts to reform the criminal justice system.

Under the leadership of Greg DeAngelo, who serves as the lab’s founding director and is an associate professor of economics, the grant—which will be distributed over five years—will enable the lab to expand its data science efforts and grow the number of faculty, graduate students, and post-docs whose research leads to real-world applications and policy change.

“This is an incredibly generous gift,” Mr. DeAngelo said. “Our lab will be able to educate and empower a whole new generation of data scientists to reveal knowledge about the criminal justice system that has remained largely unknown.”

The computational justice lab, which Mr. DeAngelo founded upon his arrival at CGU last year, creates a fusion among social science research, legal research and computer science to advance criminal justice reform.

The grant, he says, will enable the lab “to educate and empower a whole new generation of data scientists.”

Mr. DeAngelo said the lab, through several current partnerships with government agencies, is already using data science tools to assist local prosecutors’ offices in understanding the outcomes of criminal cases and the impact of judicial and prosecutorial actions.

With the Koch Foundation grant, Mr. DeAngelo expects the lab to be able to contribute not only at the local level but on a national stage where conversations are taking place about policy reform and the criminal justice system.