Cecilia Hyunjung Mo is the Judith E. Gruber Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, and an Associate Professor of Public Policy at UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy. She serves as a scientific advisor for IPA's Human Trafficking Research Initiative.

She holds a Ph.D in Political Economics and an MA in Political Science from Stanford University; an MPA in International Development from Harvard University; an MA in Secondary Education from Loyola Marymount University; and a BA in Mathematics and Interdisciplinary Studies from the University of Southern California. During the 2015-2016 academic year, she was a W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellow and the Robert Eckles Swain National Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

Professor Mo specializes in behavioral political economy, comparative political behavior, the political economy of development, and social policy research. Her applied work focuses on understanding and addressing important social problems related to human trafficking, immigration, migration, inequality, and prejudice. Dr. Mo has significant experience with experimental methods, impact evaluations, quantitative methods, and survey methods. She has carried out field studies in several developing countries, in collaboration with various international agencies, including the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the US Agency for International Development (USAID), US Department of Labor (USDOL), and the World Bank, as well as with national and local governments and local civil society organizations. Dr. Mo has provided expert opinion to develop research protocols and research instruments for the USAID EDGE-IE Guatemala Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices and Human Trafficking Victim Identification Survey. She is leading work funded by Humanity United, U.S. Department of Labor, USAID, Stanford University, Terre des Hommes, and Vanderbilt University on human trafficking vulnerability and public opinion around human trafficking policies in China, Guatemala, Jamaica, Nepal, and the United States.

Her research has been published in numerous outlets, including the American Journal of Political Science, the American Political Science Review, the Journal of Politics, the Journal of Experimental Political Science, the Journal of Theoretical Politics, Political Behavior, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and World Development. She is the recipient of the American Political Science Association (APSA)’s 2020 Emerging Scholar in Elections, Public Opinion, and Voting Behavior Award, APSA’s 2015 Franklin L. Burdette/Pi Sigma Alpha Award for the best paper presented at the annual meeting, and the 2018 Roberta Sigel Early Career Scholar Best Paper Award from the International Society of Political Psychology (ISPP). She was also awarded the 2018 Best Paper Award from APSA’s Elections, Public Opinion and Voting Behavior Section, and both the 2019 and the 2016 Best Article Published in Political Behavior Award.