Alex Severson is the Deputy Director of, and a Senior Research Scientist I at, the Center for Applied Research and Analysis (CARA), part of the Institute for Social Research at the University of New Mexico. Since joining CARA in 2020, Alex has led and contributed to a variety of impactful projects in policy evaluation, leveraging his expertise in quantitative methods and research design.Alex holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Florida State University, which he earned in 2018. Prior to his role at CARA, he served as a Visiting Assistant Professor of American Politics at Boise State University, where he taught courses on public policy, political behavior, and campaign management. His research has been published in prominent peer-reviewed journals like State Politics & Policy Quarterly, The Journal of Experimental Political Science, and Social Science Quarterly.Throughout his academic career, Alex has designed and taught over 20 undergraduate and graduate-level courses at the University of New Mexico, Boise State University, and Florida State University. His teaching portfolio spans Advanced Quantitative Analysis, Survey Research Methods, and Social Science Research Design, along with specialized courses in Public Opinion, Electoral Behavior, and Applied Campaign Management.At CARA, Alex has been instrumental in evaluating a range of state and city-funded programs. His work includes assessing the accuracy of the New Mexico Corrections Department's custody classification tool in predicting the misconduct risk of incarcerated individuals, as well as evaluating how well the Bernalillo County’s Public Safety Assessment (PSA) tool forecasts defendants' likelihood of court appearance and pretrial criminal activity. Additionally, Alex has examined both the implementation fidelity and downstream effectiveness of key Bernalillo County programs, including the Community Connections Supportive Housing (CCSH) program, the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) program, the Mobile Crisis Teams (MCT) program, and the Peer Case Management (PCM) program. As founder and chief evaluator of Lumen Evaluation, Alex has partnered with Albuquerque Heading Home's Street Connect to produce reports on the health use profiles of program participants and their linkages to community housing services. He has also recently partnered with YLabs to quantitatively evaluate how exposure to climate anomalies impacts reproductive beliefs and behaviors in low and middle-income countries.