Eric Lau

I am a graphics reporter at The Washington Post.

I previously led the engineering and data journalism teams at The Michigan Daily. I also worked as a data journalist and software engineer at The San Francisco Standard and The Texas Tribune.

I studied computer science and digital studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

Reach me at hello@[domain]. Look at my resume or consumption.

• Elon Musk gets government policy ideas from X. Here’s how.

  

  Visualized Musk’s X universe with a orbiting graphic form.

  For The Washington Post
• Trump’s USAID pause stranded lifesaving drugs. Children died waiting.

  

  Created interactive graphics showing life-threatening delays in USAID shipments.

  For The Washington Post
• We texted 1,000 Americans about Trump’s tariffs. This is how they responded

  

  Created visual elements and data pipelines for The Post’s text message-based flash polls.

  For The Washington Post
• How voters shifted in Virginia, New Jersey and New York elections

  

  Led graphics preparation and contributed to election data pipelines. Contributed to graphics in follow-up analysis stories about Virginia Democrats and Latino voters.

  For The Washington Post
• Crypto cash is flooding the 2024 election. Here’s who’s benefiting.

  

  Made an interactive beeswarm for crypto political funding.

  For The Washington Post
• Who won the Harris-Trump debate? We asked swing-state voters.

  

  Built a live-updating page showing voters’ reactions the debate. Improved on the format for the vice presidential debate and Trump’s inaugural speech.

  For The Washington Post
• ‘DEI’ vanishing from corporate filings, mirroring business world’s retreat

  

  Analyzed and visualized a decade of S&P 500 filings.

  For The Washington Post
• Why more lawmakers are quitting Congress, and what it means for the midterms

  Created graphics and compiled data for congressional departures.

  For The Washington Post
• How Mamdani stunned in New York City’s mayoral primary, mapped

  Mapped precinct-level results around the city.

  For The Washington Post
• Pro-Harris groups embrace identity to fundraise via Zoom

  Reported and gathered data on “for Harris” Zoom calls.

  For The Washington Post
• Veterans Affairs’ disability benefits program is prone to exploitation.

  Contributed graphics to series on fraud in Veterans Affairs.

  For The Washington Post
• Tracking Trump’s Cabinet and administration nominations

  Created a searchable and filterable database and visual elements showing appointees in the Trump administration. Collaborated with the Partnership for Public Service to build data pipelines.

  For The Washington Post
• Abortion should be permitted in cases of rape and incest, around 80% of Texas voters say in UT poll

  Wrote a story on abortion public opinion.

  For The Texas Tribune
• Massive power outage in Ann Arbor leaves thousands in the dark

  Built a power outage tracker and live-updating visuals.

  For The Michigan Daily
• West Texas farmers and ranchers fear the worst as drought, heat near 2011 records

  Created maps showing drought severity over time.

  For The Texas Tribune
• We looked at the 301 high schools with the most applicants to U-M. Here’s what we found

  Analyzed data and made visuals on university feeder schools.

  For The Michigan Daily
• Ann Arbor Election Results

  Built a tracker and page for live 2021 special election results.

  For The Michigan Daily

• The Michigan Daily

  

  Engineered a cross-platform mobile application.

  For The Michigan Daily
• The Michigan Daily Crosswords

  

  Built infrastructure to publish and play crosswords.

  For The Michigan Daily
• Detroit neighborhoods

  

  Built an application to crowdsource neighborhood boundaries.

  For DETROITography
• The Fable of the Lion, the Butcher, and Three Kings

  

  Developed a page for a poem about Jordan.

  For The Michigan Daily
• Writing in the Digital Dark Age

  

  Created a visual story about the Internet.

  For The Michigan Daily
• Love Notes

  

  Designed and developed a page of student love notes.

  For The Michigan Daily

• Quarters

  

  Created a website to track quarters I’ve collected.
• Bubble tea establishments

  

  Mapped bubble tea shops in New York City’s Manhattan Chinatown.

  For The Rhetoric of Mapping with Cat Cassel at the University of Michigan
• September of BeReal

  

  Created a graphic showing my BeReal usage over a month.

  For The Rhetoric of Infographics with Cat Cassel at the University of Michigan
• Police Officer

  

  For Critical Data Visualization with Catherine Griffiths at the University of Michigan
• GRAMMY

  

  For How Algorithms See with Catherine Griffiths at the University of Michigan
• Rare Botanist

  Created an automated Reddit bot to monitor house plant transactions between 14,000 members.

• Drawing Detroit: Crowdsourcing Detroit neighborhood boundaries

  Detroit GIS Day 2023 — Lightning Talks
• DTE Data Dive: A reflection on data from the February power outages

  Michigan Public Service Commission Resilience Tech Conference — Data and Mapping: Gaps and Solutions