Sloan’s Danny Goroff to Take Reins at Social Science Research Council

Daniel Goroff, a mathematician and economist with a long pedigree of policy roles at the intersection of the social sciences and public policy, has been named the 16th president of the New York City-based Social Science Research Council. He replaces political scientist Anna Harvey in the role; Harvey stepped down last year, prompting a year-long search for a replacement. The SSRC announced Goroff’s selection on Tuesday, and he will assume his new role on July 1.

The SSRC is a 103-year-old American nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing interdisciplinary research and mobilizing social and behavioral science for the public good. Since its founding, and especially before the rise of government-sponsored social science, the SSRC was seen as the face of the social and behvioral science establishment in the United States.

Goroff most recently has been vice president and program director at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, where he had worked – with several interruptions to serve in the federal government – since 2008. “Under his leadership,” according to a Sloan press release announcing his departure, “Sloan grantmaking in this space became an important force in shaping how economic and social research is conducted, shared, and applied to public life. In 635 grants totaling more than $225 million, Goroff conceptualized and seeded landmark investments across policy, research, privacy protection, data management, outreach and communications, risk detection, and regulation.” Goroff also was head of the Sloan Research Fellowship Program, which provides special funding for the junior faculty across academia.

“With the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Danny has been an effective and creative funder of frontier social science for many years. Moreover, he has a distinctive track record of bridging academia and the public sector,” a release quoted William Janeway, who chairs the SSRC board.  “As the council advances from its centenary in these tumultuous times, we have found in Danny an exceptional leader to build on the SSRC’s legacy of interdisciplinary knowledge for the public good.”

Sloan’s relationship to the SSRC was highlighted in the Sloan release, which noted the foundation has provided the research council with more than $21 million across 24 grants since 1990. Among the initiatives funded were research on the sociology of business organizations, inaugurating the Sloan Scholars Mentoring Network, and increasing access to social media data for rigorous research.

During those breaks for government service, Goroff was deputy director for science and society at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy for seven months in 2023 and division director for Social and Economic Sciences at the National Science Foundation from 2019 to 2021.

Throughout his career he also held a number of extended visiting positions at non-governmental organizations, including at Bell Laboratories, the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques, the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley, the Dibner Institute at MIT, Columbia University’s Teachers College, and the Bellagio Residency Program for Academic Writing in Italy.

Before entering the policy world, Goroff spent two decades at Harvard University, starting as an assistant professor of mathematics and advancing to professor of the practice and as associate director of the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning. From Harvard he moved across the continental United states to become vice president for academic affairs and dean of the faculty at Harvey Mudd College, where he remains emeritus professor of mathematics and humanities.

Goroff earned degrees in mathematics as a Borden Scholar at Harvard, a master’s degree in economics as a Churchill Scholar at Cambridge University, a masters in mathematical finance as an HMC Scholar at Boston University, and a doctorate in mathematics at Princeton University as a Danforth Fellow.

He was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Other honors include the 2020 Links Lecture Award from the American Statistical Association and the 2023 Leadership Award from the International Conference on the Science of Science and Innovation.