CV

Ian A. Davis

Philadelphia, PA      /      iandavis1937@gmail.com      /      iandavis1937.com     /    

Summary

Detail-oriented data storyteller & self-starter with a passion for advancing social equity via evidence-based solutions

Experience

Varsity Tutors

Math & Statistics Tutor   Remote                       03/2026 - Present

  • Tutored individuals and small groups of up to 6 students several times weekly to advance their comprehension of mathematics and statistics topics ranging from basic math literacy to calculus and college-level statistics

Penn Development Research Initiative, DevLab

Consulting Data Scientist   Remote                       09/2024 – Present

  • Used geospatial raster data and Python-powered computer vision to compare the prevalence of illegal charcoal kiln sites in treatment and comparison areas of Zambia

  • Contributed matching weight & regression analyses to the results sections of impact evaluations assessing agroforestry interventions among cocoa farmers in Cote D’Ivoire and Ghana

DataPulse Research

Freelance Contributing Data Journalist   Remote                       03/2025 – 01/2026

  • Authored short-form articles paired with interactive dashboards to communicate statistical insights on politics, culture, and leisure for a startup web publication

  • Scraped and analyzed web data using Python tools like BeautifulSoup, Ibis, Polars, Pandas, & Scikit-learn to generate interactive dashboard visualizations with Panel, Plotly, Leaflet, Datawrapper, and D3.js

Mathematica Policy Research

Bilingual Field Data Collector   Springfield, MA                       10/2025 – 12/2025

  • Managed 200+ cases for the 2025 Mass ECHOS household finance survey for the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston

  • Recruited respondents in-person at their residence using English, Spanish, and relationship-building skills

Center for Social Norms and Behavioral Dynamics, University of Pennsylvania

Research Specialist   Philadelphia, PA                       01/2024 - 02/2025

  • Writing and managing the R & Quarto codebase for seven research manuscripts investigating poverty trap mechanisms from a nationally representative survey of more than 6,000 Americans over two time periods

  • Providing policy-relevant insights about trust in institutions & social networks using Exploratory Factor Analysis and uncovering key determinants of perceived intergenerational mobility via machine learning (weighted LASSO)

  • Contributing to novel survey methodology research quantifying respondents’ uncertainty around future income

Stanford SPARQ and the Stanford Cohen Lab

Research Assistant   Remote                                02/2023 - 09/2023

  • Used R/RStudio, machine learning techniques (elastic net) and natural language processing to predict changes in over 2,000 participants’ attitudes toward federal welfare

  • Developed a Python/JavaScript text analytics algorithm that gives online survey participants real-time feedback on their communication style for better political discussions

  • Recruited 1,500 college students as online study participants via Qualtrics and an online survey panel

Intersectionality in the Social Mind Lab, Haverford College

Research Assistant   Haverford, PA                          10/2020 - 12/2022

  • Used R/RStudio, social network analysis, and text analysis to uncover gender-based diƦerences in more than 600 news articles covering police killings

  • Launched and taught data analysis workshops, mentored new lab members, and presented my work in manuscripts, posters, and presentations

Department of Psychology, Haverford College

Research Statistics Teaching Assistant   Haverford, PA                          01/2022 - 05/2022

  • Tutored individuals and small groups of up to 10 students 3-4 times weekly to advance their comprehension of statistics, quantitative research methods, and the data analysis software Jamovi

Internal Revenue Service/Coding it Forward

Data Analyst Fellow   Remote                          06/2022 - 08/2022

  • Selected from 1,600 applicants to join 160 early-career technologists in exploring federal careers

  • Empowered my team to prioritize instances of major tax fraud by developing a wealth estimator tool using recent economic research, R/RStudio, Stata, and PostgreSQL

  • Presented to senior leadership, including Acting Director of the Office of Fraud Enforcement Katie Fox

The Kensington Storefront, Mural Arts Philadelphia

Program Facilitator   Philadelphia, PA                          06/2020 - 09/2021

  • Supported the mission of Mural Arts, Philadelphia’s pre-eminent arts and behavioral health non-profit, by organizing and teaching a custom introductory Spanish course to more than 30 direct service providers

Education

B.S., Psychology Major and Statistics Minor

Haverford College, Haverford, PA                                  08/2018 - 12/2022

  • Graduated cum laude—3.89 GPA

  • Senior Thesis: “Group Status Identity as a Predictor of Social Dominance Orientation in Children”

  • Organized a Psychology department peer mentorship program in collaboration with Psych. Dept. faculty

Non-Degree Graduate Studies

University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA                          08/2024 - 12/2024

  • Completed two courses using tuition benefits: Applied Impact Evaluation & Geospatial Data Science in Python

  • Cum. GPA: 3.85

Skills

Areas of Expertise: Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, Machine Learning, NLP, Survey Design, & Spanish

Software: R/RStudio, Python, PostgreSQL, Stata, Qualtrics, JavaScript, HTML, Ubuntu, Excel, & G Suite