About Dr. Zhao
I am currently the Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago. I am interested in how the population composition of contexts, such as levels of diversity or inequality, shapes the ties and intergroup relations that underlie social cohesion. I am also interested in using networks to analyze the interpersonal relations that in turn influence behaviors and attitudes. My work spans many kinds of contexts (e.g., classrooms, workplaces, neighborhoods, and quasi-experimental populations). I am usually driven by a theoretically-motivated empirical research question that I then investigate using cutting-edge quantitative methods. My current research projects analyze social cohesion in local communities, interethnic and native-immigrant dynamics in classroom friendships, and officer racial homophily in police collaboration networks. I also teach courses on applied statistics, academic writing, and social network analysis.
Prior to joining the University of Chicago, I was a Frank H.T. Rhodes Postdoctoral Fellow at the Cornell Population Center. I received a PhD in Sociology and MA in Statistics from Harvard, and a BA in Economics from Princeton.