Paul von Hippel?s research interests include educational inequality and the relationship between schooling, health, and obesity. He is currently working on a WT Grant-funded study on the growth of achievement gaps, as well as a study, funded by the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality, on financial inequality between families and between school districts. He was a co-investigator on a state-funded project that evaluated the teacher preparation programs in Texas, and he now serves as a research advisor to a multisite randomized study evaluating the impact of summer learning programs. He is a three-time winner of best article awards from the education and methodology sections of the American Sociological Association.

Von Hippel is an expert on research design and on statistical methods for missing data. Before his academic career, he was a data scientist who developed fraud-detection scores for banks including JP Morgan Chase and the Bank of America.