CV & Bio

Jonathan N. Katz is the Kay Sugahara Professor of Social Sciences and Statistics at Caltech. His research develops statistical methods for the social sciences and uses them to answer substantive questions in political economy and political behavior, with a particular focus on elections and the evaluation of electoral systems.

Katz is Deputy Editor for Social Sciences at Science Advances (since 2018) and previously served as co-editor of the (2010–2017). He also served as Chair of Caltech's Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences from 2007 to 2014 and has long been involved with the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project.

Beyond academia, Katz has an active statistical consulting practice that often centers on how quantitative evidence is generated, evaluated, and communicated in high-stakes settings, including election-related litigation. He has also served in data-science and advisory roles with start-ups and industry.

Katz is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and an inaugural fellow of the Society for Political Methodology; he also received the Society's 2024 Career Achievement Award. He earned his S.B. in applied mathematics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his Ph.D. at University of California, San Diego, and held a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University before joining the faculty at Caltech, after an appointment at University of Chicago.