December 8, 2025

Social Science Matrix

3:30PM to 5:00PM

Douglas Rivers is Professor of Political Science at Stanford University and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He also served as the president and CEO of YouGov/Polimetrix and is currently the global polling firm’s chief scientist.

Before joining the Stanford faculty in 1989, he taught at Harvard University, Caltech, and University of California, Los Angeles. In 1996, Rivers founded Preview Systems, a publicly trading maker of software for distributing and licensing music and software over the Internet.

He co-founded Knowledge Networks in 1998 to provide public opinion survey tools and access to very large and cost-effective panels to conduct survey experiments through the WebTV box, yielding an overall response rate that is higher than most polling firms. His company was contracted by CBS, NBC and USA Today to carry out surveys. He was named “executive of the year” by the Research Business Report in 2000.

For questions, please contact the Citrin Center at citrincenter@berkeley.edu