Division Vice Chair

Akos Rona-Tas (Sociology)

Akos Rona-Tas joined UC San Diego in 1989, and is a Professor of Sociology and also founding faculty of the Halicioğlu Data Science Institute. For many years, Professor Rona-Tas was a senior research associate at INRA, Paris, and has been a visiting scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne, Germany. He is Past President of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics and the current Chief Editor of the Socio-Economic Review.

Professor Rona-Tas’s publications include The Great Surprise of the Small Transformation: Demise of Communism and Rise of the Private Sector in Hungary (University of Michigan Press), and Plastic Money: Constructing Markets for Credit Cards in Eight Postcommunist Countries (Stanford University Press), co-authored with Alya Guseva. He has worked on topics including post-communist transitions, small entrepreneurship, consumer credit, payment systems, and machine learning for text analysis. His work has appeared in journals such as American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, Theory and Society, Sociological Methods and Research, Social Science Research, Journal of Comparative Economics, Critical Sociology, and others, as well as in numerous edited volumes.

Currently, Professor Rona-Tas’s research focuses on how institutions manage uncertainty and produce predictions, specifically in the areas of credit assessment, college admissions, criminal justice, and scientific risk management.

Over his thirty-six years at UC San Diego, Professor Rona-Tas has served the campus in many roles. He chaired the Department of Sociology, served on several systemwide task forces including the UC Commission on the Future (Working Group on Access and Affordability), and has been the campus representative to the systemwide Academic Senate’s Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools (BOARS) on multiple occasions. On campus, he chaired the San Diego Divisional Senate’s Committee on Admissions, served on the Committee on Committees, and was the co-director of the International Institute. Professor Rona-Tas was also one of the initiators of the Council of Chairs. In 2024-25, Professor Rona-Tas also served as co-chair of the Senate-Administration Working Group on Admissions.