Daniel Nielson is Director of the Political Economy and Development Lab at Brigham Young University, where he is also Associate Professor of Political Science. He is a founder and principal investigator of AidData. He received his PhD in international affairs from the University of California, San Diego in 1997. He has been a visiting scholar at Duke University, the College of William and Mary, and the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Economicas (CIDE) in Mexico. He has been a principal investigator on major grants from the US National Science Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He has also served as a consultant for the World Bank and UNICEF.