Zhaotian Luo is a formal theorist with a broad substantive interest in political institutions and political economy of non-democracies. He specializes in developing and applying game theoretic models to explain interactions among political actors as well as the foundations and performance of political institutions. His current research centers on the role of information in politics. In his dissertation, Zhaotian develops several models to explain how information can be produced, communicated, and manipulated for political purposes. Besides theories about information, Zhaotian is interested in non-democracies, or more generally, comparative politics in weak institutional contexts. Zhaotian joins the University of Chicago in July 2019 after receiving his PhD from New York University.