Arthur Lupia

2017 Winner

President’s Award for Public Impact

LSA; Political Science


Arthur Lupia is the Hal R. Varian Collegiate Professor of Political Science. He examines how people make decisions when they lack information and how they manage complex information flows. He draws from multiple scientific and philosophical disciplines and uses multiple research methods. 

Lupia’s topics of expertise include information processing, persuasion, strategic communication and civic competence. He has held a range of scientific leadership positions, including principal investigator of the American National Election Studies. Lupia has also developed new means for researchers to better serve science and society.  

As a founder of TESS (Time-Sharing Experiments in the Social Sciences), he has helped hundreds of scientists from many disciplines run innovative experiments on opinion formation and change using nationally representative subject pools. He contributed to the development of the EITM Summer Institutes, and currently serves as its lead PI. Lupia is regularly asked to advise scientific organizations and research groups on how to effectively communicate science in politicized contexts. 

He currently serves chair of the National Academy of Science’s Roundtable of the Application of Social and Behavioral Science Research, is an executive member of the board of directors of Climate Central and is on the advisory board of the National Academies’ Division of Behavioral and Social Science and Education. He is past chair of the Division of Social, Economic and Political Sciences at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. 

Lupia has received multiple honors, including the Ithiel de Sola Pool Award from the American Political Science Association and the National Academy of Sciences’ Award for Initiatives in Research. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow and is one of the inaugural Andrew Carnegie Fellows. His newest book is titled “Uninformed: Why People Know So Little about Politics and What We Can Do about It.”