Jonathan N. Katz is the Kay Sugahara Professor of Social
Sciences and Statistics and Chair of the
Division of the
Humanities and
Social Sciences at the California Institute of Technology. (A
division chair is the Caltech equivalent of dean at other
universities.) He is also the Director of the Ronald and
Maxine Linde Institute of Economics and Management Sciences at Caltech.
His research
sits at the intersection of
political science, economics and statistics. The primary
focuses of his work are on the development of statistical
methods for the social sciences and their empirical
applications, particularly to questions about elections and
public policy.
Katz’s work on methods for time-series cross-sectional data,
such as used in comparative political economy and
international relations, has been highly influential, now
appearing in textbooks and widely used statistical analysis
software. His 1995 paper in the American Political Science
Review with Nathaniel Beck was listed as the eighth most
influential article (by citation count) published in the first
century the flagship political science journal in 2006. It was
the youngest article to make the top 20. His research on
redistricting and other aspects on elections besides appearing
in scholarly journals has been cited in several legal cases
including a Supreme Court decision.
Katz is currently the co-editor of Political
Analysis, the journal with the highest impact factor in
political science according to ISI, and the editor for
quantitative methods at the Political Science Network
(PSN). He serves on the editorial board of four other
journals. He served as co-director of the Caltech/MIT Voting
Technology Project. Katz is also a member of the University
Advisory
Council of the Pohang University of Science and Technology
(POSTECH) and the Advisory Board of Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of
Science and Technology (DGIST) both in South Korea.
Katz was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences (2011) and as an inaugural fellow of the Society for
Political Methodology (2008). He was a fellow at the Center
for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (2005-2006), a
visiting professor at the University of Konstanz (2003), and a
John M. Olin Foundation Faculty Fellow (1999-2000). He has won
the Pi Sigma Alpha Award (1998) and the CQ Press Award
(1996). His research has been funded by the National Science
Foundation (NSF), the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD),
IBM, and the John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation.
Katz received his S.B from the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (1990) and a Ph.D. from the University of
California, San Diego (1995). He was a Post-Doctoral Fellow in
Positive Political Economy at Harvard University and a
Fellow at the Harvard/MIT Data Center (1994-1995). He was
previously on the faculty of the University of Chicago
(1998-2000).
A complete copy of his curriculum vitae may be found
here.