Kevin Zollman

Head of Institute

Kevin Zollman is a professor in the Department of Philosophy and Social and Decision Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University.  His research focuses on game theory, agent-based modeling, and the philosophy of science.  He has worked on topics relating to misinformation and group learning, communication (in humans and non-human animals), incentives in science, and ethical decision making under uncertainty.

Simon DeDeo

Simon DeDeo is an associate professor in Social and Decision Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University, and External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. He engages in empirical investigations, and builds mathematical theories, of both historical and contemporary large scale social phenomena. His topics range from the centuries-long timescales of cultural evolution to the second-by-second emergence of social hierarchy in the non-human animals, from the editors of Wikipedia to the French Revolution to the gas stations of Indiana.

Russell Golman

Russell Golman is an associate professor of Behavioral Economics and Decision Sciences in the Social & Decision Sciences Department at CMU. He combines economics, psychology, and mathematics to develop theories about why people (and societies) make the choices they make. His behaviorally grounded models of belief-based utility and complex decision processes offer insights about what people want to know (and not know), how people express their desired identities in social interactions, and how people make strategic decisions.

Kara Kedrick

Kara Kedrick is the inaugural postdoctoral fellow for the Institute for Complex Social Dynamics at Carnegie Mellon University. Her research investigates the ‘ecosystem of discovery’, with a focus on the cognitive processes and social dynamics that drive the expansion of human knowledge. She has studied such topics as curiosity, creativity, information seeking, and semantic search, while also examining how diverse perspectives and the structure of scientific concepts shape individual and collective discoveries.

John Miller

John Miller is a professor in Social and Decision Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University. His research focuses on understanding the behavior that emerges in complex adaptive social systems. To do so requires new sets of tools, such as computational models being driven by analogs to natural evolution. He has explored adaptive social behavior across many fields, including anthropology, biology, economics, game theory, and political science.

Nynke Niezink

Nynke Niezink is an assistant professor in the Department of Statistics and Data Science at CMU, with a courtesy appointment in the Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy. Her research focuses on statistical methods for network analysis, with applications in education, health psychology, management, and criminology. Her actor-oriented models study the dynamics of networks and individual behavior based on longitudinal data. In her work on higher-order network structures, she addresses intricate network phenomena, such as group behavior and network perceptions.

Cosma Shalizi

Cosma Shalizi is an associate professor in the Department of Statistics at Carnegie Mellon University, with joint appointments in the Machine Learning Department, Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition, and the H. John Heinz III College. He is also external faculty with the Santa Fe Institute. His research interests include statistical inference for complex systems; nonparametric prediction for stochastic processes; causal inference; large deviations and ergodic theory; networks and information flow in neuroscience, economics and social sciences; heavy-tailed distributions; and self-organization.