Nimai is Senior Professorial Lecturer, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, at American University, Washington D.C. Nimai’s area of research is on the quality and use of data under varying institutional contexts. He is the lead coordinator of a multidisciplinary effort at the university to employ data-science, economics, and machine-learning to improve data on missing and exploited children.

He was previously the principal investigator for a UNICEF project on the quality of education data and reforms in Myanmar. He also held the position of Academic Director of the Economic Policy Program at the university, where his work focused on an empirical and institutional analysis of government failure. Nimai has held teaching positions at the School of Economics, University of the Philippines, where he was a Research Fellow and Program Associate. Prior positions include: Visiting Scholar at the James M. Buchanan Center for Political Economy, Virginia. Nimai obtained his Masters in Applied Economics from Bombay University, and a Doctorate in Economics from George Mason University.