Matt Birnbaum is the Director of the Office of Research and Evaluation and has been with IMLS since 2011. He leads a growing portfolio of ORE services utilizing a wide array of social scientific applications including statistical survey collections, monitoring/evaluation endeavors including performance reporting, research investigations, and data innovations. Earlier in his career, he had served on the faculty of a graduate program in public administration at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh and had created an evaluation function at the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF). He has penned multiple publications, including authoring a 2012 article in Advances in Librarianship.

Matt Birnbaum holds a PhD in urban and regional planning from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Bachelor of Science degree from Cornell University.