Michael Ostermann is an Associate Professor at the Rutgers University School of Criminal Justice and Co-Director of the New Jersey Center on Gun Violence Research.  His research interests primarily lie within the fields of prisoner reentry and corrections, and how they intersect with public policy.  His recent work investigates the impact of post-release reentry services upon recidivism, whether effects vary across different levels of programmatic quality, how the privatization of correctional services influence mechanisms of social control, and how measurement strategies by researchers translate into different policy prescriptions within evaluation research. Ostermann has served as Principal Investigator on several federally funded grants that investigate research questions about evidence-based crime policies, and include partnerships with practitioners and other criminal justice stakeholders. The American Probation and Parole Association have awarded his research activities, and he received the American Society of Criminology’s Division on Sentencing and Corrections’ Distinguished New Scholar award in 2016 for his early career scientific contributions. His student mentoring efforts have been awarded by Rutgers University, and The College of New Jersey (his alma mater) and the American Criminal Justice Association have awarded him for his service contributions as a publicly engaged scholar.