Professor of Political and Computational Social Science
B.A., Carleton College, 1986; M.A., Duke University, 1990; Ph.D., 1992. Assistant Professor, Caltech, 1992-95; Associate Professor, 1995-2002; Professor, 2002-.
Michael Alvarez's research focuses on public opinion and voting behavior, election technology and administration, electoral politics, political campaigns, and statistical and computational modeling. He has long been interested in empirically testing formal models of elections and voting behavior.
Alvarez is the co-director of the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project. He is a fellow of the Society for Political Methodology and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has been recognized for his mentoring work, both at Caltech by the Graduate Student Council (twice) and by the Society for Political Methodology. He also received the Emerging Scholar Award in the Elections, Public Opinion, and Voting Behavior Section of the American Political Science Association in 2001.
Research Summary
Elections; Campaigns; Political Behavior; Election Administration; Election Security; Election Technology; Public Opinion; Political Methodology; Statistics; Computer Science; Machine Learning; Deep Learning; Survey Methodology
Center for Science, Society, and Public Policy within the Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences launches with a public forum on the ethics of artificial intelligence later this Spring.
Professor of Political and Computational Social Science Michael Alvarez and Bren Professor of Computing and Mathematical Sciences Anima Anandkumar discuss how misinformation is amplified online and ways their artificial intelligence (AI) tools can help create a more trustworthy social media ecosystem.
Research Website