Nick’s work centers on building the capacity of youth-serving public agencies and nonprofits to use data and research evidence effectively. These efforts build on the use of data linkages, the development of flexible analytical pipelines, and close contact with practitioners. His leadership of research/practice partnerships focuses on producing rapid turnaround reports aligned with the operational and decision-making needs of a wide range of actors at both system and organization levels.

Nick founded and co-led the Youth Data Collaborative at Chapin Hall, which provided support to youth-serving nonprofits and public agencies with a library of reports that helped assess whether programs were being equitably accessed, described gaps in the engagement of youth in focal populations across schools and neighborhoods, statistically evaluated associations between program involvement and youth outcomes, and facilitated data communications with school principals, foundations, and the public.

Nick is a co-investigator of the federal Child Care Policy Research Partnership grant in Illinois where he used reproducible research methods to create tools for state childcare officials to examine patterns of childcare subsidy eligibility numbers and take-up rates. These measures help assess point-in-time equity of take-up and, with the ability to update these numbers over time, provide a novel means for state actors to evaluate various initiatives to increase childcare accessibility and take-up rates.

Nick was a mentor for the inaugural Data Science for Social Good fellowship at the University of Chicago and has been both a faculty and professional advisor to the Harris School of Public Policy’s Harris Policy Labs practicum. He has presented his work to wide audiences including conferences in economics, public policy, data science, and demography; has presented applied work to groups of city and state officials; and maintains a wide library of open-source tools and projects.