Jonathan Caulkins

Jonathan Paul Caulkins, born in 1965, is the H. Guyford Stever Professor of Operations Research and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz College, where he has served on the faculty since 1990. He earned his bachelor's and master's degrees from Washington University in St. Louis in 1987 and his doctorate from MIT in 1990, with a dissertation on the distribution and consumption of illicit drugs and its policy implications. He co-directed the RAND Corporation's Drug Policy Research Center from 1994 to 1996 and founded RAND's Pittsburgh office in 1999. Caulkins's research applies operations research methods to drug policy, producing findings that challenged conventional assumptions, including evidence that most incarcerated drug dealers are readily replaced on the street, undercutting claims that mandatory minimum sentences reduce drug supply. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2015.