The Team | Scientific Advisory Board
Douglas Rivers, Ph.D. President and CEO
Ashley Grosse, Ph.D. Director of Client Services
Jeff Lewis, Ph.D. Director of Statistics
Samantha Luks, Ph.D. Director of Database Development
Michael Nardis Vice President of Survey Services
Brad Palmquist, Ph.D. Vice President of Information Services
Brian Stults Vice President of Data Services
Lynn Vavreck, Ph.D. Consultant, Cooperative Congressional Election Study
Douglas Rivers, Ph.D.
President and CEO
Douglas Rivers is one of the world’s leading experts on survey research and a successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur. He has taught at Harvard University, Caltech, UCLA, and, most recently, Stanford University, where he is Professor of Political Science and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution.
Rivers has founded two successful technology companies, Preview Systems and Knowledge Networks. Preview Systems pioneered the field of digital rights management, conducted a successful IPO in 1999, and was sold to Aladdin in 2001. Knowledge Networks introduced probability sampling to the Internet in 1998 and is currently ranked as the 25th largest market research company in the U.S. according to Marketing News. Rivers was CEO of Knowledge Networks from 1998 to 2002 and currently serves as its Chairman. He was named Executive of the Year in 2000 by Research Business Report and awarded the Innovator’s Award by the American Association of Public Opinion Research in 2001 in recognition for his work at Knowledge Networks.
He also is a consultant to CBS News and has published numerous academic papers in the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Econometrics Journal, and the Journal of Econometrics. He holds a B.A. from Columbia University and a Ph.D. from Harvard University.
Top
Ashley Grosse, Ph.D.
Director of Client Services
Director of Client Services
Ashley Grosse brings over 10 years of experience in survey design to the Polimetrix team. Her interest in polling and survey design extend back to early work as a reporting manager for Voter News Service. After working at VNS, Grosse became Director of Studies for the American National Election Studies (NES), the nation's largest and most celebrated time series data set for research on American Politics. The NES is financed by the National Science Foundation and has been the national record of political behavior and opinion for more than 50 years. As director of studies for NES, Grosse fielded several important studies of campaigns and elections in the U.S. and across the globe. Most recently, in 2002 and 2004 she helped to design and manage campaign studies for the Center for the Studies of Elections and Democracy that have been widely cited by the New York Times and lawmakers interested in the impact of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act. She earned a B.A. at Texas State University and an M.A. and a Ph.D. from Washington State University.
Top
Jeff Lewis, Ph.D.
Director of Statistics
Jeff Lewis works on problems of political behavior. He has assembled and analyzed massive databases of ballot impressions yielding new insight into a range of campaign and electoral treatments, such as slate mailers, candidate and voter ideology, ballot order, and ballot type. His peers have recognized his creativity in the analysis of disaggregated election returns. In 2003, Lewis was co-recipient of the Society for Political Methodology's Warren Miller Prize for the best paper published in the political methodology journal, Political Analysis in that year. In addition to his work on ballot data, Lewis works extensively on problems of ecological inference. He has held appointments at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Government and Public Affairs and Politics Department, and is currently a faculty member at UCLA. His methodological work can be read in the Journal of Political Economy, Historical Methods, and Political Analysis. Lewis earned a B.A. at Wesleyan University and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Top
Samantha Luks, Ph.D.
Director of Database Development
Samantha Luks studies a wide range of topics in political behavior and political psychology. She has published articles on presidential elections, African American partisanship, trust in government, attitudinal ambivalence, and welfare dynamics and her work can be found in outlets such as Political Psychology and Presidential Studies Quarterly. Additionally, she has collected extensive data on voting technology and elections over time and has developed techniques for analyzing administrative data and records. Luks previously held an appointment at the University of Minnesota. She earned an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley and a B.A. in Mathematical Methods in the Social Sciences from Northwestern University.
Top
Michael Nardis
Vice President of Surveys
Michael Nardis studies political behavior in the public sector. Prior to joining Polimetrix, he was with the New York office of Mercer Management Consulting. While with Mercer, Nardis specialized in strategic marketing. He executed a number of customer segmentation studies and strategy audits, advising Fortune 500 clients in financial services, telecommunications, and manufacturing. He holds a B.A. in economics and government from Georgetown University & an M.A. in political science from Stanford University; he is currently a Ph.D. candidate (on leave) at Stanford University.
Top
Brad Palmquist, Ph.D.
Director of Information Services
Brad Palmquist specializes in the study of political parties and partisanship. His recent book, Partisan Hearts and Minds: Political Parties and the Social Identities of Voters (Yale University Press, 2002) was acclaimed as "a profound breakthrough in our understanding of partisan loyalties," and hailed as the most important contribution to the study of parties in two decades. Palmquist held appointments at Harvard and Vanderbilt Universities. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley and a B.S. in Computer Science from Middle Tennessee State University. He also completed coursework for a M.S. in Computer Science at Middle Tennessee State University.
Top
Brian Stults
Vice President of Data Services
Brian Stults joins Polimetrix after several years working with non-profit organizations. Most recently, he was National Voter File Director for one of the largest get-out-the-vote drives in history. In this capacity, he constructed voter files and managed data processes for fifteen states. Prior to working with non-profits, Stults independently constructed voter files and performed database enhancement work for clients including various state parties and candidates. Stults holds two summa cum laude degrees from Dartmouth College, one in Quantitative Political Analysis and the other in Mathematical Social Sciences. His Honors Thesis research on economic voting won the College's prize for best piece of research written by an undergraduate in the year 2001. Stults's research has been presented at professional conferences and is under consideration at various peer-reviewed journals.
Top
Lynn Vavreck, Ph.D.
Consultant, Cooperative Congressional Election Study
Lynn Vavreck studies campaigns and elections and has read every campaign stump speech, advertisement, and leading newspaper article about each election since 1952. She comes from a background in practical politics, starting her career as a Media Advance Representative for The White House in 1991 and did the same during the 1992 presidential campaign. During her tenure as an Assistant Professor at Dartmouth College, Vavreck studied the nation's first primary, appearing on numerous radio and television programs discussing her research on "retail politics" and why it works. Now a professor at UCLA, Vavreck is researching the effectiveness of political advertising on cable television. Her work can be read in the American Journal of Political Science, British Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, and in Campaign Reform: Insights and Evidence (University of Michigan 2000). Vavreck holds a B.S. and M.A. from Arizona State University and an M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Rochester.
Top
|
