"Boston-based team of mathematicians and computer scientists working on U.S. redistricting"
why does the US need redistricting? and who asked these people to do it?
Is this an earnest question?
this might very well be something someone would honestly ask. so no reason to downvote imho. some good pointers to explanations would do better I guess.
These aren’t the people doing the actual redistricting - that is controlled by the government of each state. Redistricting is generally needed to respond to changes in population - with a set number of representatives in most legislative bodies and an expectation of one person/one vote, districts need to be redrawn fairly frequently to deal with geographically concentrated population growth or decline.