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Research & Innovation

The Pardee RAND Graduate School is unique in offering a doctoral program in policy analysis within an applied policy research setting and focus on innovative analytic methods. RAND provides an environment ideally suited to educating graduate students in policy analysis, offering a range of research opportunities in policy analysis that is unmatched by any other institution. Through our required research fellowships, the Pardee RAND curriculum enables students to participate in current RAND research projects in a range of policy and analytic areas.

Analytic Methods Centers

Drawing on the expertise of more than 1,000 world-class researchers, faculty, and students, the Methods Centers at Pardee RAND organize our diverse base of expertise around a set of interlocking and leading-edge analytic domains to create the next generation of research methods and tools.

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    RAND Center for Applied Network Analysis and System Science

    The Center for Applied Network Analysis and System Science applies rigorous network research methods to pressing policy challenges. This work provides important insights about the structural, contextual, and societal factors that influence physical, human, and organizational systems.

  • Domino Effect

    RAND Center for Causal Inference

    CCI focuses on improving the use of state-of-the-art causal inference methods, which help researchers understand relationships between causes and effects. Understanding these relationships is critical in almost every policy domain, including health, labor, education, environmental studies, public safety, and national security.

  • Person walking through a maze-like landscape

    RAND Center for Decision Making under Uncertainty

    The Center for Decision Making under Uncertainty assesses the depth and breadth of uncertainty and risk levers in policy domains and research pathways. It employs multiple methodologies, including forecasting and decision support, to analyze organizational decisions in broad settings where the uncertainty is high, the risk is complex, and the implications of such decisions are long term and future oriented.

  • Map and game pieces from RAND-conducted war game

    RAND Center for Gaming

    The Center for Gaming promotes the use of games in research to improve decisionmaking across a wide range of policy areas, including urban planning, climate change, drug policy, disaster response, nuclear proliferation, and military operations.

  • Digital voice recorder, pen and paper

    RAND Center for Qualitative and Mixed Methods

    The Center for Qualitative and Mixed Methods develops and promotes tools for generating empirically based insights through exploratory data collection and analysis. Mixed methods are ideal for situations involving novel environments and foreign cultural contexts.

  • A Hadoop computer cluster of Cubieboards on Lubuntu operating system

    RAND Center for Scalable Computing and Analysis

    The Center for Scalable Computing and Analysis engages in and supports the transformation of data science at Pardee RAND and within RAND as a whole, by fostering a community of expertise on best practices for the use of large-scale data.

Policy Research Areas

As part of RAND Corporation, students have the opportunity — and in fact are required — to conduct policy research as part of RAND research teams. Our policy research areas include health, education, and wellbeing; defense and security; global issues; and much more.

Featured Initiatives

  • Pardee Initiative Offers Bold Ideas for Global Human Progress

    Launched in December 2013 with a generous grant from Frederick S. Pardee, the Pardee Initiative for Global Human Progress is a new approach to chronic problems faced by the developing world, most notably food insecurity and challenges of urbanization.

  • Cazier Initiative for Energy and Environmental Sustainability

    The Cazier Environmental and Energy Sustainability Initiative is turbocharging research in environmental and energy sustainability at Pardee RAND to generate new concepts, tools, and methods to improve public policy and the commercial sector.

  • Student-Led Initiatives

    Pardee RAND encourages students to extend their policy analysis training outside of the classroom, through the International Development Speaker Series, the L.A. Policy Symposium, and other student-led initiatives.

  • James Q. Wilson Collection: A Research Archive

    The James Q. Wilson Collection includes nearly 1,400 books from his personal collection and an archival collection of approximately 20 linear feet of papers that RAND Knowledge Services has cataloged for the benefit of the research community. A finding aid is available to help researchers explore the collection.