Tim Hannifan

Tim Hannifan is a Software Engineer at the University of Chicago Data Science Institute. He serves as technical lead designing and building data science workflows while mentoring student teams through end-to-end implementation across 15-20 concurrent partnerships with industry, public sector, and non-profit organizations.

Tim leads engineering for the AI in Education Working Group, developing agentic tutoring systems using retrieval-augmented generation and human-in-the-loop Socratic questioning. His work spans traditional machine learning and modern AI applications, translating technical concepts into development plans and delivering actionable insights for diverse stakeholders.

Prior to joining the University of Chicago, he automated large-scale healthcare text analysis at Mathematica Policy Research, created comprehensive employment datasets for World Bank economic research, and developed quantitative trading strategies at Credit Suisse. He also founded TJH Media LLC, building custom applications for clients across multiple sectors.

Tim holds an MS in Computational Analysis and Public Policy and a BA in Economics from the University of Chicago.