Ken Steif, the former director of Penn’s Weitzman School of Design’s Master of Urban Spatial Analytics (MUSA) program, an associate professor of practice in the Weitzman School’s department of city and regional planning, and a well-loved neighborhood personality in Spruce Hill, passed away on September 3 after a long battle with cancer. He was 38. 

Born in Queens, New York, Dr. Steif moved to New Haven, Connecticut, with his family at a young age. His mother ran the historic Shubert Theatre in New Haven, and there he discovered a love for music and theater. After graduating from high school, he moved to Philadelphia to attend Temple University, where he studied and developed a passion for geography and urban studies. He graduated cum laude from Temple in 2004; then, five years later, he came to Penn to begin a master’s in urban spatial analytics, a degree he received in 2010. In 2015, he also received a PhD in city and regional planning from Penn. 

While working towards his PhD, Dr. Steif founded Urban Spatial, a consultant firm at the intersection of data science and public policy. There, Dr. Steif worked at the forefront of data-driven public policy, combining his technical knowledge of geographic information systems (GIS) and applied statistics with an interest in housing policy, child welfare, education, the economics of neighborhood change, transportation policy and more.

Between 2007 and 2011, Dr. Steif served as a research assistant and teaching assistant in various schools at Penn, and in 2011 he became a lecturer in the Weitzman School’s department of city planning. After receiving his PhD, Dr. Steif founded the Master of Urban Spatial Analytics program, which taught students how to put coding to use in urban planning and public policy and which has become one of the top data science programs in the country. His vision was for students to use data to develop technology and governance solutions capable of tackling today’s most complex and pressing public policy problems. In his tenure as MUSA director, Dr. Steif shifted the program’s emphasis from GIS to civic technology, enabling students to develop technology and governance solutions to solve complex public policy problems.

“His work centered around this idea that so many people out there can do analytics, but it’s a better challenge to do it for public policy,” said Ben Dodson, a student in the MUSA program. “Public policy doesn’t get as much attention as Silicon Valley. But it’s using all the same tools to figure out the best way to do these things [in a public sector context] with limited resources.”

Dr. Steif published his research in a series of friendly and accessible articles on the Urban Spatial website. In 2021, he published a groundbreaking book, Public Policy Analytics: Code & Context for Data Science in Government. The book, which Dr. Steif made available for free online, enables readers to build public-sector analytics in R, ranging from simple maps and indicators to complex machine learning algorithms. Allison Lassiter, Dr. Steif’s colleague in the department of city and regional planning, said, “there is no better guide to data science in the public realm!”

Outside of Penn, Dr. Steif was active in his neighborhood, serving on the board of the Spruce Hill Community Association and advocating for the preservation of Victorian town homes in the area. “He was one of most multi-dimensional people I’ve ever met,” said Michael Fichman, Dr. Steif’s longtime collaborator, colleague at the Weitzman School, friend, and neighbor. “Not only was he a scholar and a leader in his professional field, but he also was a talented musician who threw DJ nights across West Philly. He was the center of a bunch of social universes, and he was well-loved by many communities.” 

Dr. Steif is survived by his wife, Diana Owens Steif; two sons, Emil and Malcolm Steif; his mother, Caroline Werth; father, Paul Steif; and brother, Dan Steif and family. He was buried on September 9 in Woodland Cemetery, 50 feet from a community garden plot that he and his wife Diana had tended. 

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