VTP Faculty



Stephen Ansolabehere

Stephen Ansolabehere

Stephen Ansolabehere is Professor of Government at Harvard University. He is an expert in public opinion and elections, and has published extensively on elections, mass media, and representation, political economy, and public opinion, especially concerning energy and the environment. He is author of four books: The Media Game, Going Negative, American Government, and The End of Inequality. He is a Carnegie Scholar (2000), a Hoover National Fellow (1994), and Truman Scholar (1982) and was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2007.

He directed the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project from its founding in 2000 through 2004; is a member of the Board of Overseers of the American National Election Study and the Reuters Institute of Journalism at Oxford University; and consults for CBS News Election Decision Desk. He is the principal investigator of the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, a collaborative effort of over 60 universities and colleges in the United States.






Charles Stewart

Charles Stewart III

Charles Stewart III is the Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Political Science at MIT, where he has taught since 1985. His research and teaching areas include congressional politics, elections, and American political development.

His current research about Congress touches on the historical development of committees, party leadership, and Senate elections. Since 2001, Professor Stewart has been a member of the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project, a leading research efforts that applies scientific analysis to questions about election technology, election administration, and election reform. He is currently the MIT director of the project. Professor Stewart is an established leader in the analysis of the performance of election systems and the quantitative assessment of election performance.

Professor Stewart has been recognized at MIT for his undergraduate teaching, being named to the second class of MacVicar Fellows in 1994, awarded the Baker Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, and the recipient of the Class of 1960 Fellowship. Since 1992, he has served as Housemaster of McCormick Hall, along with his spouse, Kathryn Hess.

Professor Stewart received his B.A. in political science from Emory University, and S.M. and Ph.D. from Stanford University.






Alvarez Photo

Michael Alvarez

Professor of Political Science at Caltech. Michael's research and teaching focuses on elections, voting behavior, and election technologies. He's had the good fortune to study elections throughout the world, and to be involved in a number of research projects in the United States and abroad.






Jonathan Katz

Jonathan Katz

Jonathan N. Katz is the Kay Sugahara Professor of Social Sciences and Statistics and the Chair of the Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences at the California Institute of Technology. He also is the Director of the Ronald and Maxine Linde Institute of Economic and Management Sciences. His research interests focus on American politics, political methodology (statistics applied to political science), and formal political theory.






Ronald Rivest

Ronald Rivest

Professor Rivest is the Vannevar Bush Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He is a member of MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), a member of the lab's Theory of Computation Group and a founder of its Cryptography and Information Security Group. He is a co-author (with Cormen, Leiserson, and Stein) of the text, Introduction to Algorithms. He is also a founder of RSA Data Security, now named RSA Security (the security division of EMC), Versign, and Peppercoin. Professor Rivest has research interests in cryptography, computer and network security, electronic voting, and algorithms.