Zack Almquist

Education History

• Ph.D., Sociology, University of California, Irvine, 2013
• M.A., Demography, University of California, Irvine, 2008
• M.S., Statistics, Northwestern University, 2007
• B.S., Mathematics, University of Oregon, 2005

I received my BS in Mathematics from the University of Oregon (2005), MS in Statistics from Northwestern University (2007), MAs in Demography and Sociology from the University of California, Irvine (2008; 2010), and a PhD in Sociology from the University of California, Irvine (2013). Before joining the faculty at the University of Washington (2020) I held a joint appointment as an Assistant Professor in the department of Sociology and School of Statistics at the University of Minnesota (2013-2018). Most recently, I was employed as a research scientist in Demography and Survey Science at Facebook (2018-2020).

Research Overview

My research centers on the development and application of mathematical, computational, and statistical methodology to better understand the problems and theories of social networks analysis, demography, education, homelessness, and environmental action and governance. Currently, my research program is focused on understanding, modeling, and predicting the effects that space and time have on human interaction and social processes. My research has been published in numerous peer-reviewed journals in the social sciences, statistics and computer science fields.

My teaching efforts have mainly focused on social network analysis, big data, computational methods, research methods, statistics, demography, and urban sociology. At the University of Washington I expect to teach graduate courses in statistics while my undergraduate courses should include big data and computational methods in the social sciences.