About Sam Zhang
my email is shimian dot my last name at gmail.com
Pronouns: he/him.

I am a PhD candidate in the Department of Applied Mathematics at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and an NSF Graduate Research Fellow in the area of Science Policy. I consider myself a computational social scientist and a data scientist.

My PhD thesis research is on inequalities in academia, with specific focus on the ways that institutional prestige shapes faculty careers. My advisor is Aaron Clauset.

I take the practical implications of my research seriously, and work actively to improve public higher education in Colorado. In particular, I organize with my labor union, United Campus Workers Colorado, having served for two years on its elected Steering Committee, and am currently serving my second term on the Executive Board of UCW's Local, CWA 7799. I am also serving on the City of Boulder's Police Oversight Panel.

For the last two summers, I was a research intern with the Computational Social Science group at Microsoft Research NYC. I have also been active in the data for good community: I am a Data Science & Human Rights Fellow with the Human Rights Data Analysis Group, and previously a Data Science for Social Good Fellow at the University of Chicago. I also scoped projects, and trained other project scopers, for the 2020 Solve for Good Summer.

Prior to my PhD, I worked as a professional software engineer at the consultancy formerly known as Pivotal Labs and the Code for America startup OpenCounter. I received my undergraduate degree in Computer Science and Psychology from Swarthmore College in 2014.

Link to CV
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