He was professor emeritus of political science at Duke University, an affiliate of the Duke Network Analysis Center, and the principal investigator at Ward Lab, a website that creates conflict predictions using Bayesian modeling and network analysis.
He then joined the Science Center Berlin, working with Karl Wolfgang Deutsch and others for two years building a global political model.
He later moved to the University of Washington in 1997 where he was a founding member of the Center for Statistics and the Social Sciences, serving on its executive board for a decade.
"[9] Ward is also known for having a relatively optimistic outlook about the ability to forecast potential conflicts and crises, putting him at odds with Jay Ulfelder, as expressed in an article by Ulfelder for Foreign Policy and a response by Ward and Metternich in the same magazine.
[12] A paper co-authored by Ward and others at Ward Lab[13] received a mixed review from Ulfelder, who agreed with the author's goals and their assessment of the importance of the scientific value and policy relevance of forecasting, but considered the author's attempt in the paper to be overly ambitious.