Sunil Iyengar

Sunil Iyengar directs the Office of Research & Analysis at the National Endowment for the Arts. Since his arrival in June 2006, the NEA has produced over 20 research publications, hosted research events and webinars, updated the NEA's five-year strategic plan, and revised a federal survey about arts participation. The NEA’s recent research includes: Time and Money: Using Federal Data to Measure Performing Art Activities (2011); Arts Education in America: What the Declines Mean for Arts Participation (2011); Live from Your Neighborhood: A National Study of Outdoor Arts Festivals (2010); and Audience 2.0: How Technology Influences Arts Participation (2010). The office also has published such reports as Artists in the Workforce 1990-2005 (2008), To Read or Not to Read: A Question of National Consequence (2008), and The Arts and Civic Engagement: Involved in Arts, Involved in Life (2007). The Office of Research & Analysis maintains the Survey of Public Participation in the Arts, America's largest periodic survey of adult involvement in arts events and activities, which has been conducted five times since 1982, in partnership with the United States Census Bureau. The 2012 survey will reach a population twice as large as in prior years. For a decade, Sunil worked as a reporter, managing editor, and senior editor for a host of news publications covering the biomedical research, medical device, and pharmaceutical industries. He writes poetry, and his book reviews have appeared in the Washington Post, The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, The American Scholar, The New Criterion, and Contemporary Poetry Review. Sunil has a BA in english from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.