I am an assistant research scientist at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University, where I co-developed the Mapping Modern Agora Project. I am also a research fellow at Harvard Kennedy School and a fellow at the Better Government Lab at Georgetown’s McCourt School and Michigan’s Ford School. Starting January 2026, I will join The University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill as an assistant professor of public policy.
Previously, I worked as a senior data scientist at Code for America, where I collaborated with the U.S. government to improve access to safety net programs. I completed my PhD in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley in 2021.
My research has been published in Nature Human Behaviour, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Nature Scientific Data, Perspectives on Politics [2x], Political Research Quarterly [2x], Journal of Experimental Political Science, and Studies in American Political Development, among others. I am the recipient of the APSA’s Emerging Scholar Award in Civic Engagement (2024), APSA’s Best Dissertation Award in Urban and Local Politics (2022), and WPSA’s Best Paper Award in Asian Pacific American Politics (2020).
I am a computational political scientist focusing on urban, social, and tech policy in the United States. Specifically, I use computational approaches to study (1) state capacity in policy implementation and (2) civic capacity in offline and online spaces. My recent projects seek to identify and reduce administrative burdens in U.S. safety net programs. To achieve this goal, I utilize human-centered design, field experimentation, surveys, data science, and AI, collaborating with state and local governments and nonprofits.
I am a co-founder of the Data for Good Roundtables where academics and practitioners come together to discuss using data for good.
If you want to connect with me, please reach out via jkim638@jhu.edu / jaeyeonkim@hks.harvard.edu.
Here is a link to my CV.