Adjunct Faculty & Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science || M.S. Candidate in Data Science (Artificial Intelligence track)

I'm Ali Amini, adjunct faculty and Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at the School of Public Affairs, and M.S. candidate in Data Science at American University in Washington, D.C.

My dissertation, Three Essays on AI, Causal Inference and Political Psychology, develops new theory for American politics, frameworks for causal inference, and frontier AI for social science. My chapter on transfer learning for survey research received AAPOR's Bud Roper Fellow Award (2025), and my chapter on Artificial Polarization received a Princeton and APSA Section 10 travel award for PolMeth 2026 and the AAPOR 2026 student poster runner-up award.

My committee brings together political psychology and methodology: David Barker (Chair), my mentor and former Director of SBE Sciences at the National Science Foundation; Jan Leighley; Jeff Gill, my advisor; and Ryan Moore. I also served as data editor at Political Analysis under Jeff Gill.

I am affiliated with the Consortium on Moral Decision-Making at Penn State, where I work with psychologists on AI and empathy, and I serve on the council and committee of DC-AAPOR and on AAPOR's Transparency Initiative Coordinating Committee.