Jonathan Wai is an assistant professor and the endowed chair in education policy in the department of education reform at the University of Arkansas, with a joint appointment in the schools’ psychology department. He studies educational policy, especially in STEM fields, through the lens of psychology. 

Wai’s research interests include STEM achievement gaps, the development of prodigies, the educational background of leaders, educational inequality and the value of higher education. 

He serves on multiple boards, including the research advisory board of the College Board Admissions Research Consortium and formerly at the MATHCOUNTS Foundation. He leads the education working group of the Association for Psychological Science Global Collaboration on COVID-19.

Wai was a research scientist at Duke University, a research fellow at Geisinger Health System and a visiting scholar at Case Western Reserve University. He received a B.A. in psychology and mathematics from Claremont McKenna College, an M.A. in cognitive psychology and evaluation from Claremont Graduate University, and an M.S. and Ph.D. in quantitative methods for psychology from Vanderbilt University.

His work has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Economist, Scientific American, Nature and Science. 

Courtesy of Jonathan Wai

Pronouns: He/him

Expertise: Educational policy, STEM achievement gap, psychology, education reform

Location: Fayetteville, Ark.

Email: jwai@uark.edu 

Twitter: @JonathanLWai

Heard on The Engineering Commons: “Episode 80 – Spatial Reasoning”