Linda Zhao

Linda Zhao is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago, where she holds an affiliation with the Department of Sociology. She earned a B.A. in Economics from Princeton University (2013), an M.A. in Statistics from Harvard University (2017), and a Ph.D. in Sociology from Harvard University (2020). Prior to her current role, she served as a Frank H.T. Rhodes Postdoctoral Fellow at the Cornell Population Center.

Her research explores how social contexts like diversity and inequality shape intergroup dynamics in networks, with a focus on immigrant integration, policing, and public health. She employs computational models, quasi-experimental data, and social network analysis to investigate topics such as police misconduct networks, interethnic friendships, and neighborhood-level health disparities.

Recent work includes studies on officer networks and police misconduct (2024), third-generation immigrant assimilation patterns (2024), and social cohesion in superdiverse populations (2023). Her methodologies bridge sociology, demography, and computational science.

Dr. Zhao teaches courses on applied statistics, academic writing, and social network analysis. Her research has been published in top journals such as the American Sociological Review and the American Journal of Sociology.