Figure 1. Urbanization around Chinese New Villages (Kinta Valley) and FELDA settlements (Jengka Triangle), Malaysia, 1975 to 2020.
Figure 2. Who would go uncounted under the proposed census rule, by group (A) and by place (B).
Figure 3. Erik and Theda at the window.
Hi, I’m Tyler! Welcome to my website.
I am a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science and Scientific Computing at the University of Michigan, where I am also completing an M.A. in Statistics. I am affiliated with the International Institute and the Center for Political Studies. I am also a 2026–2027 graduate fellow at the Michigan Institute for Computational Discovery and Engineering (MICDE).
Substantively, I study how population changes (e.g., urbanization, generational turnover, migration of racial and ethnic groups) and elite politics jointly shape electoral outcomes, political parties and party systems. Methodologically, I focus on ecological inference, hierarchical modeling, simulation approaches, and measurement and inference of Time-Series Cross-Sectional (TSCS) data.
As a speaker of Mandarin Chinese, Malay, Indonesian, and Japanese, I explore cases across East and Southeast Asia as well as the United States. My fieldwork sites include Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur, Kuala Selangor, Penang, Melaka, Kuala Terengganu, Petaling Jaya, Putrajaya), the United States (Metro Detroit, Metro Milwaukee, and New York City), and Singapore, among others.
My teaching topics include comparative politics, statistical inference and data science, and electoral politics. At UMich, I have co-organized the China Reading Group, a Rackham-sponsored interdisciplinary workshop, since 2023. I also co-organized the Interdisciplinary Workshop on Comparative Politics from 2023 to 2024, and was the president of the Graduate Association of Political Scientists from 2025 to 2026.
My research appears in the Journal of East Asian Studies and in the two leading Chinese-language journals of Southeast Asian studies. My papers, datasets, and CV are linked above.
Outside the academy, I am the dad of two black cats, Erik and Theda, and a volunteer foster with the Humane Society of Huron Valley.
