Jarod T. Giger, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the School of Social Work within the Greenspun College of Urban Affairs at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). A first-generation college graduate and fifth-generation farmer, Giger integrates research methods, wellbeing, and AI into his scholarship.

His current scholarship includes natural language processing and counterfactual methods. He published a chapter titled "It Took My Village: How the Pandemic Worsened Decades of Social Isolation and Increased Loneliness," in Academic Chutes & Ladders: The Hidden Curriculum That Makes or Breaks Academic Careers (Bloomsbury Academic, 2026). His clinical background includes working as a licensed Clinical social worker delivering Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) at the Alton Mental Health Center Forensic Unit, practicing with the Washington University School of Medicine at the Metropolitan Psychiatric Center, and working in private practice at DbtSTL.

Prior to joining UNLV in 2022, Giger held the Vernon Wiehe Excellence in Social Work Endowed Professorship at the University of Kentucky, spent five years at the University of South Dakota, served six years on the editorial board of The Journal of Rural Health, and was inducted into the UK Center for Interprofessional Health Education. He also completed a postdoctoral fellowship with the National Rural Health Association focused on telehealth policy and cross-state licensure.

Giger earned his Ph.D. in Social Work from the University of Missouri, where his doctoral research bridged social care and technology at the Center for Eldercare and Rehabilitation Technology (College of Engineering). He holds a business analytics science certificate from UNLV (SQL, Tableau, strategic predictive modeling) and a teaching with artificial intelligence credential set from Auburn University. As a 2025–2026 UNLV teaching with generative AI fellow, he focuses on the responsible, ethics-centered integration of AI in higher education.