I am a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Princeton University in the Department of
Politics. In Fall 2025,
I will start as an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of
Michigan.
I
am the Co-PI of
the Algorithm-Assisted Redistricting Methodology (ALARM)
Project, a research group focused on political geography and spatial inequality. I received my PhD
from
the Department of Government at Harvard University in 2024, where I was affiliated with the Center for American Political Studies, Program on Education Policy and
Governance, and the Harvard Mellon
Urban
Initiative.
I specialize in US state and local politics, with
particular expertise in how policy design can improve or worsen inequality between
our cities, neighborhoods, and
schools. I have active research agendas in policy areas like legislative
redistricting ("gerrymandering"), school segregation, and
data privacy. Methodologically, I develop and
use techniques in computational social science, causal inference,
and machine learning to evaluate inequality and how it can be reduced. My work has been
covered by media outlets like The
Washington Post and The
Associated Press.
I also study policymaking in local governments like city councils, school boards, and planning boards.
For example,
I
co-created
LocalView — the largest
audio, video, and text database of local government meetings in the United States — with
Soubhik Barari.
I teach data science and American politics courses at the graduate, undergraduate, and high school levels. For example, I created a course on US Local Policymaking in Spring 2022 for Harvard undergraduates, re-designed the summer data science training for MPA/ID students at the Harvard Kennedy School in 2022, and created an Introduction to Data Science in Summer 2021 for high school students in New Jersey.
I regularly partner with federal, state, and local officials to improve program design and reduce administrative burdens. I am a Data Scientist at the Office of Evaluation Sciences, where I work in an interdisciplinary team to design causal evaluations of government programs. Before graduate school, I was elected to two terms on the South Amboy Board of Education in New Jersey and served as the President.
If you have any questions / comments, here is my e-mail: tsimko@g.harvard.edu.