José J. Alcocer, MPP

Welcome! I am a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate in Political Science and International Relations at the University of Southern California's Department of Political Science and International Relations. My research and professional interests span legislative institutions, computational social science, and political methodology, particularly in the context of race and ethnicity.

As a graduate research associate at the Security and Political Economy Lab (SPEC), I contribute to the Everyday Respect project, which develops multimodal, multi-perspective machine learning models to study communication between officers and drivers during traffic stops in Los Angeles. My work focuses on using Machine Learning (ML) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to identify verbal and nonverbal communication preferences that residents wish to see or avoid from police officers. Additionally, I apply causal inference and machine learning to analyze the effects of police behavior on minority communities.

I am also a computational social scientist with The Center for Election Science's applied data and research team, where I work on issues related to voting methods, election reform, and minority political behavior.

In addition, I serve as a survey statistician with the U.S. Census Bureau's Federal Statistical Research Data Center (FSRDC) branch at USC.

I received my B.A. in Political Science from California State University, Long Beach and my Master of Public Policy (MPP) from the University of Southern California’s Sol Price School of Public Policy, where I specialized in Applied Econometrics, Health, and Environmental Policy.

Outside of academia, I enjoy studying languages, traveling, and amateur photography. I have shared some of the pictures that I have taken over my travels in the Photography section, hoping they provide some cool amusement and inspiration.