Michael Zhao is a junior from California living in Quincy House and concentrating in Statistics and Computer Science with a secondary in Government. His principal research interests lie in the development and novel cross-application of computational techniques to areas in government and law.

Michael has been a research assistant for Prof. Kosuke Imai at IQSS since 2022, working on statistical techniques to better understand the partisan fairness and demographic characteristics of congressional districts through quantitative measures. He has co-developed an R package, ALARMDATA, to facilitate the study of gerrymandering, and is currently looking at causal inference methods for analyzing the effects of redistricting.

Outside of his research at IQSS, Michael also serves as a co-president of Harvard Computer Society and an undergraduate fellow of the Harvard Kennedy School's Program on Science, Technology & Society.