Joseph Cimpian

Joseph Cimpian, Ph.D. (Stanford University), is Professor of Economics and Education Policy at New York University. His research focuses on understanding the patterns and causes of social and educational inequities, and then identifying policy and practice solutions for removing barriers and promoting equity. His research has been funded by the Institute of Education Sciences, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the Spencer Foundation. He is currently the PI or co-PI of active grants and contracts totaling over $10 million, including a $7.4-million national investigation of the effects of English learner classification and reclassification policies, based on his pioneering research using regression discontinuity designs to inform policies concerning reclassification decisions. Another line of his research examines the roles of social, institutional, and psychological factors influencing the development of gender gaps in STEM. His research in that area has used experiments to reveal biases against the math abilities of girls and racial minorities, and his large-scale data research has uncovered how low-achieving men are disproportionately drawn to math-intensive college majors. Other research of his has documented the need for supports for LGBTQ+ youth, while also enhancing the rigor of research in that area by developing methods to improve data quality for survey data comparisons of majority and minority youth. 

Dr. Cimpian’s peer-reviewed research has been published in Science, JAMA Pediatrics, Child Development, the American Journal of Public Health, Educational Researcher, and the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, among many other journals. He has presented his research at invited seminars at top universities around the world, including Stanford, Princeton, Chicago, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Sciences Po. His work has been featured in numerous outlets, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, NPR, PBS Newshour, and Brookings. Dr. Cimpian has presented his policy research at a U.S. Congressional briefing, at an annual meeting of the Council of Chief State School Officers, and to the Federal Committee on Statistical Methodology. He is a recipient of a Spencer Foundation/National Academy of Education Dissertation Fellowship, and subsequently, a Spencer/NAEd Postdoctoral Fellowship. He served as Editor of Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, as a special issue Editor of Educational Researcher, and on the Editorial Boards of numerous journals, including Educational Researcher, the American Educational Research Journal, the Journal for Research on Educational Effectiveness, and Child Development. He served appointments as Chair of the Scholars and Advocates for Gender Equity committee and as a member of the Social Justice Action Committee for AERA. At NYU, Dr. Cimpian advises doctoral students in Public Policy at NYU Wagner and the new doctoral program in Statistics and Computational Social Science; he co-directs the Master’s program in Education and Social Policy; and he regularly works closely with doctoral students in the IES-PIRT program (cross-university), Applied Psychology (in Steinhardt), Public Policy (in Wagner), and Psychology (in Arts and Sciences).