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Isaiah Raynal

Ph.D. Candidate

Biography

I’m a social scientist with 4+ years of experience in quantitative and qualitative research design and data analysis.

My primary interest is in better understanding people’s attitudes in order to better inform decision-making.

From helping my university’s Graduate College to better understand their students’ needs to finding ways to reduce animosity between Republicans and Democrats, I am most excited by projects that improve real-world outcomes.

I submitted my dissertation in September 2024, will defend it in October 2024, and plan to graduate in December 2024. I am actively seeking full-time roles as a researcher, data analyst, or project manager.

Research Interests

Proficiency in Google Suite, Microsoft Office, Qualtrics, R Studio | Familiarity with Tableau, GitHub, Python, SQL, ArcGIS
Data collection | Data cleaning | Data analysis | Data visualization
Surveys and survey experiments (closed- and open-ended questions) | Interviews | Text analysis
Descriptive statistics | t-tests, difference in means | linear, logistic, multivariate regressions | content analysis | text mining
English (native) | Spanish (advanced) | Portuguese (beginner)

Education

Master of Arts in Political Science | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign | December 2021

Bachelor of Arts | Northwestern University | June 2018

Grants

Garner Fellowship (AY 2024-2025)

Kneier Fellowship (AY 2023-2024)

Dean S. Dorman Scholarship (March 2023, May 2023, March 2024)

Institute for Humane Studies Fellowship Grant (December 2023)

Illinois Distinguished Fellowship (AYs 2020-2023)

Career Exploration Fellowship (Spring 2023)

George Yu Scholarship (March 2021, March 2022)

Constantine Curris Award (March 2021)

Courses Taught

Instructor, PS 305: The U.S. Supreme Court (Fall 2024)

Instructor, PS 201: U.S. Racial & Ethnic Politics (Fall 2023, Spring 2024)

Grader, PS 302: U.S. Constitution II (Spring 2023)

Additional Campus Affiliations

Recent Publications

Usher, N., Wong, A. T., Raynal, I. R., Bigman-Galimore, C., & Maslowska, E. (2023). Localizing COVID-19 public health department outreach on digital platforms: The role of discoverability, reach, and moderation for Illinois' COVID-19 vaccination rates. American Behavioral Scientisthttps://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00027642231166884