Biography

Nicholas D. Bernardo, Jr., Ph.D., is the Assistant Director of the Engineering for Democracy Institute and instructor in the Department of Mechanical, Industrial & Systems Engineering at the University of Rhode Island.

Dr. Bernardo is an industrial engineer with a focus on harnessing engineering tools to solve challenges in election preparation and ballot processing. Since his start in this area as an undergraduate research assistant in 2017, Dr. Bernardo has worked with election officials throughout the United States to design and implement statistics, simulation, and algorithmic tools to facilitate election preparation and ballot processing for both Election Day voting and Vote-by-Mail systems. Through this work, he has assisted in developing web-based tools, technical reports, presentations, and bespoke models to solve various election-related challenges across the continental United States.

Dr. Bernardo’s work has been supported by the Rhode Island Secretary of State, the Rhode Island Board of Elections, Democracy Fund, Partnership for Large Election Jurisdictions, and the US Election Assistance Commission. He received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. Industrial & Systems Engineering from the University of Rhode Island.