Claire McKay Bowen is a senior fellow in the Center on Labor, Human Services, and Population and leads the Statistical Methods Group at the Urban Institute. Her research primarily focuses on developing technical and policy solutions to safely expand access to confidential data that advances evidence-based policymaking. She is also interested in improving science communication and integrating data equity into the data privacy process. In 2021, the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies identified her as an emerging leader in statistics for her technical contributions and leadership to statistics and the field of data privacy and confidentiality. Further, she is a member of the Census Scientific Advisory Committee and several other data governance and data privacy committees, and she is an adjunct professor at Stonehill College.
Bowen holds an honors BS in mathematics and physics from Idaho State University and an MS and PhD in statistics from the University of Notre Dame. After completing her PhD, she worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where she investigated cosmic ray effects on supercomputers.