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Mohar Chatterjee

Tech Writer & Analyst

Committed to quantifying the invisible factors that shape our world.

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Hello from the top of Taipei 101 on July 14 2026!

About Me

I'm an Indian Bengali woman, raised in Bahrain, based in Washington, D.C. In July 2025, I became a U.S. citizen. Before that I lived in Pasadena, CA for undergrad (Caltech) and New York, NY for grad school (Columbia University).

I hold Master's degrees in Computer Science and Journalism, and Bachelor's degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Business Economics — a combination that lets me look at U.S. tech economics as both a system to be modeled and a story to be told. That perspective drives my work as a tech writer — previously as Politico's first national AI reporter and now as an independent columnist for Asian audiences on tech geopolitics.

And If you're reading this from a local newsroom with a data project that needs a hand, I also work as a freelance OSINT analyst. Take a peek at my CV for a complete list of past projects and publications.

I am deeply curious about the commercial and social impact of new technologies. I also believe we work best when we collaborate — coming out on top of the latest wave of disruption is going to take all of us.

Get in touch with me at mohar.chatter@gmail.com

Keep scrolling to see some of work. You can also find some announcements on X.

Some Recent Publications

USA TODAY •

The US is undercounting COVID deaths, researchers say. Now they have a tool to figure out why.

The US is undercounting COVID deaths, researchers say. Now they have a tool to figure out why.

Death rates among Native, Hispanic and Black Americans still outpace pre-pandemic figures, showing the hidden toll of COVID-19 on communities of color even as vaccines have become widely available, according to data released this week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Consider the impact to Hispanic residents: In the first 10 months of 2021, before the typically deadly winter months,
KQED •

Fentanyl Is Killing More People During the Pandemic. In Santa Clara County, Victims Are Getting Younger

In April, the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office filed murder charges against one of those alleged dealers for selling fake pills that killed an 18-year-old woman.

Grace Bhardwaj and her 17-year-old boyfriend had purchased what they thought were Percocet pills on Snapchat on April 5, according to the county's District Attorney’s Office..

What the couple got instead, officials said, are known on the street as M-30s, little blue pills with an M inside a box on one side and the number
KQED •

How We Analyzed Death Records and Found Overdoses Rising

While reporting on infectious disease deaths is normally considered the purview of the medical examiner or coroner, most counties in California assigned the tracking and reporting of COVID-19-related deaths to local health departments.

In Santa Clara County, all COVID-19 deaths were reported to, and reviewed by, the Medical Examiner-Coroner’s Office, regardless of whether an individual lived in the county or elsewhere. This included deaths occurring at home, and in hospitals, long-term care fac
KQED •

California's Working-Age Latinos Are Disproportionately Dying of COVID-19

On Dec. 20, as many Bay Area families prepared to celebrate an unusual pandemic Christmas, Maribel Alvarado’s family confronted some shocking news. The vibrant 38-year-old had died suddenly from COVID-19 that day, at a Kaiser Hospital in San Jose. Alvarado had started feeling symptoms less than a week before, and her doctor had recommended bed rest, said her sister Carmen Bueno. Alvarado didn’t have any other illnesses or high-risk medical conditions. “She was perfectly healthy. So I’m just conf
The COVID Tracking Project •

Analysis & updates | Why Some States Won’t Share Race and Ethnicity Data on Vaccinations with the CDC—and Why That’s a Problem

This past fall, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention asked every US state and territory to , agreeing to share wide-ranging vaccine data and records with the federal government. raised concerns, but every one signed.

But it turns out that most states ended up withholding the names, addresses, ZIP codes, and dates of birth of those vaccinated, and at least seven states go a step further and redact race and ethnicity data from the federal government or don’t collect it in the first plac
Detroit Free Press •

Michigan was warned about British COVID-19 variant, but many ignored it

Michigan was warned about British COVID-19 variant, but many ignored it

A deadlier coronavirus variant that had first ravaged Britain was now here — in metro Detroit, at the University of Michigan, a state prison in Ionia and rural counties in the Thumb region — with doctors, nurses and public health officials fully aware.

And yet Michiganders — from state prison employees to small business owners and local officials to parents of high school athletes — ignored medical experts' repeated warnin
Wired •

The Demise of White House Market Will Shake Up the Dark Web

You’ve probably never heard of White House Market. Google can't find it. Its vendors don't advertise much. The few public references to the website are on Reddit forums or specialty tech blogs. But among users of the dark web, WHM was, for years, the go-to online marketplace for illegal drugs and fraudulent credit cards.

Despite never reaching the peak trading volumes of its more-famous cousins Silk Road and AlphaBay, White House Market had established itself as one of the most popular—and secu

Other Projects

Mohar Chatterjee •

Fossil Fuels and Natural Gas Extraction Map API Walkthrough

Basic, interactive 3D map to help users understand and visualize impact of oil and natural gas extraction on wildlands, water and air quality within USA. API supports user review system for local wildlife spotting, air, and water quality. Extraction sites, air and water quality databases were created using EPA, US Geological Survey, and FracTracker Alliance data. Developed by Mohar Chatterjee and John Daciuk for Columbia's Introduction to Databases class (Luis Gravano, Fall 2020), where it won best project.
Back-end: PostgreSQL, SQLAlchemy, Flask Python.
Front-end: Google Maps API, JavaScript.