Dr. Timothy Bray
Project Co-Director
Dr. Timothy Bray serves as the Director of the Institute for Urban Policy Research at the University of Texas at Dallas. He is also a member of the faculty in the Public Policy and Political Economy and Social Data Analytics and Research programs, where he teaches courses specializing in quantitative methodology for graduate students. His work exposes students to complex social problems.
Dr. Bray’s research at the Institute has focused on the strategic use of data and information to improve the quality of life. With his research team, he has extensive experience with local administrative data and secondary demographic data, as well as surveillance and risk datasets.
Dr. Bray joined the faculty at UT Dallas in 2002 after serving as Associate Bureau Chief for Strategic and Operational Research for the Illinois State Police. He holds a Ph.D. in Criminology from the University of Missouri – St. Louis.
Dr. Curtis Bram
Survey Advisor
Curtis Bram is an assistant professor of political science at The University of Texas at Dallas, where he teaches survey methods in the School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences.
Dr. Bram received a Ph.D. in Political Science from Duke University in 2023. At Duke, he was a member of the Kenan Institute for Ethics’s Worldview Lab. After graduating from The University of Chicago in 2016 with an M.A. (Honors) in International Relations, Dr. Bram worked in investment banking in Tokyo, Japan . Before that, he graduated from Tulane University in 2014 with a B.A. in economics and political science.
Dr. Jennifer Holmes
Project Advisor
Jennifer Holmes is a professor of public policy and political science, and serves as Dean of the School of Economic, Political, and Policy Sciences at the University of Texas at Dallas.
Her major areas of research are political violence, terrorism, and political development with an emphasis on Latin America, especially Colombia and Peru. In addition to numerous journal articles, she is the author or editor of seven books, including Guns, Drugs and Development in Colombia (University of Texas Press, 2008), Terrorism and Democratic Stability Revisited (Manchester University Press, 2008), Latin American Democracy: Emerging Reality or Endangered Species? (Routledge, 2008, 2015), and Immigration Judges and U.S. Asylum Policy (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015). Dr. Holmes ongoing research is focused on four areas: the landscape ecology of conflict and post-conflict, the protection of critical infrastructures, urban quality of life, and the creation of real time event data on political and social events in Latin America.
Dr. Karl Ho
Survey Advisor
Karl Ho is a political scientist and data scientist at the University of Texas at Dallas. He is the Director of Graduate Studies for the Political Science program and founding faculty member of the Social Data Analytics and Research (SDAR) Master’s program under the School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences. He specializes in survey methodology and big data analytics focusing on inter-disciplinary applications.
Dr. Ho is co-Principal Investigator of multiple survey projects including the COMETrends at UT Dallas and the Hong Kong Election Study. His research employs survey data and big data in studying elections, public policy and political economy. He is the co-host of the Data Analytics Colloquium, an online webinar program featuring the latest data science methodologies and research.
Dr. Ho is co-editor of Taiwan: Environmental, Political and Social Issues, and an author of book chapters in The Taiwan Voter and Taiwan’s Political Re-Alignment and Diplomatic Challenges. In addition, his work has been published in many journals. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of North Texas.
