Alexander Furnas

Faculty / Data Analytics and Visualization

Alexander Furnas

Alexander Furnas is a Research Assistant Professor at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, affiliated with the Center for Science of Science & Innovation and the Ryan Institute on Complexity. His work sits at the intersection of science, politics, and data science, examining how scientific knowledge, expertise, and funding shape—and are shaped by—political institutions and public policy. Using large-scale datasets and computational methods, his research spans topics including policy use of science, political polarization, scientific careers, and the governance of expertise.

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About

I'm a Research Assistant Professor at the Center for Science of Science and Innovation in the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, a Faculty Associate at Institute for Policy Research, and the Ryan Center on Complexity. I received a Ph.D in Political Science at the University of Michigan in 2020 in American Politics (major subfield) and Quantitative Methods (minor Subfield). I specialize in the role of information and expertise in the policymaking. My dissertation examined the conditions under which Congress uses privately provisioned information produced by outside organizations in the policymaking process. More generally, I study interest groups, Congress, the intersection of science and politics, policy making and elite political behavior using survey, text analysis and network methods. I also have ongoing research projects on congressional staff capacity, interest group ideal point estimation, lobbying firms, and text reuse detection.

My research has been published, or is forthcoming, in American Political Science Review, Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, The American Journal of Political Science, International Conference on Learning Representation (ICLR), Legislative Studies Quarterly, Interest Groups & Advocacy, Applied Network Science, and Research & Politics. My work has also appeared, or been featured in, Vox, The Atlantic, and Science Magazine among other popular outlets.

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