Welcome!

My name is Igor. I am a data scientist and writer working in the energy sector—and a quantitative social scientist by training.

Currently, I am on leave from UCLA while I work with the Enterprise Operational Risk Management team at Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) as a data science intern building tools for automating risk assessment and analysis. In my spare time, I manage a voter information initiative called the Voter Guide Project (UCLA VGP); check out the guides we published for the 2024 November election.

At UCLA, I am a PhD candidate in Political Science and Teaching Fellow. My dissertation is on the conditions under which voters learn about policy/politics, the relationship between participation and accountability, and political bias in climate action (e.g., responding to natural disasters). I have published in American Political Science Review (flagship political science journal) as well as various policy venues and public media.

My teaching mostly focuses on American politics (especially state/local institutions), and statistical methods for political science research, with a particular focus on equipping current college students with empirical skills and careful, research-driven critical thinking skills.

My most recent projects analyze the effects of local partisan election administration in the U.S. (published at the American Political Science Review; co-authored with Joshua Ferrer and Dan Thompson and available here), provide causal evidence of the effect of higher education on political participation (awarded a summer research prize from the California Policy Lab; co-authored with Daniel Firoozi and available here), and examine the effect of political institutions (e.g., primaries) on voters' ability to learn about policy (work in progress).

Please click here for an updated version of my CV: link. Need to get in touch? igorgeyn at gmail dot com.