Professor Pais is a demographer and stratification researcher with a methodological interest in modeling complex spatial, hierarchical, and longitudinal data structures. Much of his scholarship draws on a life course perspective to advance our understanding of how local labor market characteristics and other community contexts, like residential segregation and immigrant population concentration, affect social mobility. He also conducts research on the impact of natural disasters, and other environmental hazards, on community resilience and wellbeing. His current research project examines the societal challenges to sustainable urban development. His research appears in several reputable outlets: American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, Demography, and Social Forces, among others.

He is also currently the Director of Graduate Studies for the Sociology Department, the Director for the Accelerated 4+1 MA program, the CLAS liaison for the Data Science Major’s Population Dynamics domain, and the Co-Director of the Urban Environment Lab. In his free time, he goes hiking and fishing with his pup BeiBei.