Computational Social Science Community of Practice Members

bendoly.2@osu.edu Professor of Management Sciences, Associate Dean, Fisher College of Business My work has focused on how operational decisions and worker behavior can be influenced by the presence of technology-supported feedback, highlighting their own actions and/or the changing nature of their work context. An additional research focus deals with operational coordination, examining similar issues at the group level (eg. project teams, or between functional groups within firms). Such settings are further complicated by within-group dynamics, variable agendas and knowledge bases, as well as decisions regarding explicit operational resource sharing.

braumoeller.1@polisci.osu.edu Associate Professor, Department of Political Science General areas of interest

1. The formation, maintenance, and dissolution of political order at the international level and its implications for international conflict.
2. Causal inference using observational data and, more specifically, evidence-based foreign policy evaluation.

Relevant current and recent research

1. Only the Dead: The Persistence of War in the Modern Age (ISBN: 978-0190849535)
2. International Order and International Conflict (working title)
3. Flexible Causal Inference for Political Science (doi: 10.1017/pan.2017.29)

• Scholars with knowledge of agent-based models of aggregation and/or dynamic network formation
• Social scientists interested in the problem of social order
• Historians interested in international order and empire
• Policy practitioners interested in evidence-based policy evaluation

brooks.719@osu.edu Assistant Professor, School of Environment and Natural Resources – Environmental and Social Sustainability Lab and SRE Discovery Theme I am working on applying cultural evolution and cultural multilevel selection frameworks to examine the emergence, persistence, and spread of behaviors, norms, and institutions related to natural resource conservation and sustainability. This has largely been related to common pool resource management challenges, but also may also apply to changes in environmental values and sustainable consumption patterns. I’m most interested in the feedbacks between individual preferences and behaviors and group-level structures and dynamics.

chavez.102@osu.edu Assistant Professor, Department of Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology & TDAI Discovery Theme I am an evolutionary geneticist/evolutionary ecologist and mainly use a population genetic framework with genomic datasets to address questions regarding diversification, adaptation, and speciation in natural animal populations. I am largely interested in the genomic changes that allow organisms to adapt to different and changing environments, as well as the changes that initiate and reinforce the speciation process.

clark.2962@osu.edu Demographer: Professor, Sociology

• Improving the ‘verbal autopsy’ method used to quantify the burden of disease for populations without full coverage vital statistics systems
• Mapping child mortality at the subnational level through time using household survey data in countries without full coverage vital statistics systems
• Developing new population indicator measurement strategies and statistical methods to implement them
• Fertility and Mortality: variety of projects investigating levels and trends in fertility and mortality, mostly in Africa

downey.205@osu.edu Associate Professor, Anthropology I am an ecological anthropologist whose interdisciplinary research explores the social and environmental dynamics of farming and foraging societies, past and present. My research projects include analyses of long-term (10-4kya) archaeological time series for regime shifts and early warning signals of collapse, computational historical linguistics in Indonesia, and a multi-year study of the landscape-scale effects of social networks, social norms, and subsistence agricultural practices of contemporary Maya communities in southern Belize. I am interested to develop interdisciplinary collaborations, especially involving computational models, methods, and theory from geographic science, ecology, mathematics, and physics.

field.59@osu.edu Anthropology, Associate Professor I’m an archaeologist and I specialize in the prehistory of the Pacific Islands. I conduct research of prehistoric food production, foraging, and ecological transformation on islands via the study of archaeological remains—ceramics, fauna, microfossils, artifacts, architecture, and others. I also specialize in GIS-based analyses and modeling, radiocarbon dating, and geoarchaeology. I’m also interested in applying archaeology-generated knowledge of past foraging and food-production systems to modern issues of conservation, sustainability, and resilience.

garabed.1@osu.edu Rebecca Garabed (Associate Professor, Veterinary Preventive Medicine) is researching mechanisms that maintain infectious disease transmission in the endemic state with the goal of developing novel population-level interventions to improve animal health.

goodhart.19@osu.edu PhD Student, Political Science General Areas of Interest: Formation and maintenance of social order; coercive bargaining; patterns of norm diffusion; how state learning affects security-related decisions.

hamilton.598@osu.edu Ian Hamilton (Associate Professor, EEOB and Mathematics) studies animal social systems and coupled human-natural systems using game theoretical models, agent-based models, and collection of experimental and observational data in the field and laboratory. Current areas of research include the evolution of social interactions in hierarchically organized animal societies, conflict management in animal societies, the social context of mate choice, dynamics of habitat use and resource defense in humans and other animals, and direct and indirect interactions between fishers and fish.

hood.211@osu.edu Assistant Professor, EEOB Jim Hood studies the influence of human-induced change (climate change, land use change, nutrient loading, etc.) on the structure and function of aquatic ecosystems. Current projects focus on phosphorus cycling in agricultural watersheds, the influence of declining ice cover on lake food webs, and how anthropogenic and natural perturbations influence the stability and resilience of aquatic ecosystems. My lab group addresses these questions through a combination of field measurements using environmental sensors and other approaches, experiments, and analysis of long-term datasets.

huling.7@osu.edu Assistant Professor, Statistics My work focuses on the development of precision medicine, causal inference, and machine learning methodology for the analysis of complex observational studies. I focus on addressing various forms of population heterogeneity in statistical modeling efforts. In particular I am interested in understanding how different people respond differently to treatments or interventions with the aim of optimally matching people with available treatments or interventions. Current work involves health system risk modeling and personalizing health sytem intervention enrollment decisions.

hyder.22@osu.edu Assistant Professor, Public Health Ayaz Hyder is currently utilizing systems models to address complex health outcomes, such as infant mortality, reproductive health, food insecurity and opioid misuse epidemic. He also conducts translational research on air pollution sensors and food systems that are community-driven and linked to K-12 STEM education.

kalcic.4@osu.edu Assistant Professor, Food, Agricultural and Biological Engineering (FABE) I mainly study ecohydrology and conservation practice effectiveness through computer modeling and monitoring. Much of my research is currently located in highly agricultural watersheds draining to Lake Erie. I study how adoption of conservation practices influences hydrology and water quality (particularly nutrients, nitrogen and phosphorus) in surface waters. I am also interested in the human dimensions of agricultural management, and have studied farmers’ perceptions of targeting conservation practices as well as ecosystem services, as well as co-production of science and engagement of stakeholders in this work.

lkubatko@stat.osu.edu Professor, Statistics and EEOB Laura Kubatko currently develops statistical models and computational algorithms for inferring evolutionary relationships based on genome-scale DNA sequence data. Recent projects include the study of evolutionary diversity in white-fly transmitted viruses of cassava plants in East Africa and the study of speciation and hybridization in Penstemon in North American.

melamed.9@osu.edu Sociology, Assistant Professor I’m studying the impact of network topology on prosocial behaviors between humans. I do this with online experiments of iterated games or through mathematical and agent-based models. I’m also working on methods for predicting rare events. This entails identifying the factors that lead to non occurrence of events and removing cases for which there is effectively zero likelihood of the event occurring. This increases power for modeling cases with non-zero likelihood of the event occurring.

montenegro.8@osu.edu Assistant Prof, Geography My formal training is in physical oceanography and my current research interests can be divided in two tangentially related areas:

1. Climate dynamics at the global to continental scale, mostly based on numerical modeling. My recent work has been focused on simulations of deep past climate states in order to understand potential influences on biogeochemical cycles on large-scale extinction events. That being said, I have worked on and am still interested in anthropogenic warming impacts.
2. Environmental influences on past human migrations/movement. For this I use a mix of modeling – including an ocean voyaging computer model – and observations. I’ve looked, for example, into the questions related to the peopling of the Americas and settlement of Polynesia.

moritz.42@osu.edu Associate Professor, Anthropology I study social-ecological systems using conceptual frameworks of ethnography, behavioral ecology, complexity, and coupled human and natural systems (and many others). Most of my research has focused on pastoralists in Central Africa, but recently I have started working on floodplain fishery systems.

passino.1@osu.edu Professor, Dept. Electrical and Computer Engineering, MBI My group studies:

• Mood disorders (depression, bipolar), emotion regulation, anxiety, stress reduction, and attention
• Mathematical/computational modeling and analysis (feedback control, stability analysis, stats, optimization, and evolutionary game theory) of these
• Technology development for helping people with mental illness (apps, virtual reality, music, EEG, HRV)

paul.963@osu.edu Assistant Professor, Statistics My research focuses on statistical inference in networks, including their multi-layer, heterogeneous and dynamic variants. I aim to develop scalable model based as well as spectral and matrix factorization based methods to analyze networks. I am also interested in the analysis of neuroimaging data obtained from both functional MRI and in-vivo Calcium imaging and much of my current research is motivated by such applications.

rayo.3@osu.edu Assistant Professor, Integrated Systems Engineering I study the characteristics that foster teamwork in humans and machines, and how these teams can be architected to support joint cognition in increasingly complex and dangerous settings. The two branches of my current work are in devising new technologies that combine visual and computational analytics to support sensemaking, and developing a systemic analysis method to better explain the non-linear and non-causal contributors to system success and failure.  

shroff.11@osu.edu Ohio Eminent Scholar and Chaired professor of ECE and CSE, College of Engineering General Areas of Interest:

1. Communication Networks (wireless and wireline), Internet of Things, Computing Systems, Electric grid, Social Networks, Transportation networks; Interdependent Systems…
2. Interested in fundamental problems in learning, design, control, performance, pricing, and security of these complex systems
3. Methodologies and Techniques: Optimization; Stochastic analysis and Control; Graph Theory; —Algorithms; —Learning; Game Theory…

Interested in talking to: Scholars with complementary expertise on network science; economists and statisticians interested in complex systems  

srinivasan.88@osu.edu Associate Professor, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering General areas of interest: Human and animal movement, biomechanics, sensorimotor neuroscience, robotics, human and machine learning, cooperative/ adversarial/collective behavior Relevant current and recent research/Website/Recent Publications Interested in talking to: Anyone interested in human/animal/robotic-agent behavior, broadly construed.

sullivan.948@osu.edu Professor, Departments of Microbiology and Civil, Environmental and Geodetic Engineering General areas of interest:

• viruses in complex communities – oceans, soils, human gut and lung
• inferring process and mechanism from organismal abundances and physicochemical datasets

Relevant current and recent research:

1. Guidi, L.*, Chaffron, S.*, Bittner, L.*, Eveillard, D.*, Larhlimi, A., Roux, S., Darzi, Y., Audic, S., Berline, L., Brum, J.R., Coelho, L.P., Espinoza, J.C., Malviya, S., Sunagawa, S., Dimier, C., Kandels-Lewis, S., Picheral, M., Poulain, J., Searson, S., Tara Oceans Consortium Coordinators, Stemmann, L., Not, F., Hingamp, P., Speich, S., Follows, M., Karp-Boss, L., Boss, E., Ogata, H., Pesant, S., Weissenbach, J.,, Wincker, P., Acinas, S.G., Bork, P., de Vargas, C., Iudicone, D., Sullivan, M.B., Raes, J., Karsenti, E., Bowler, C., & Gorsky, G. 2016. Plankton networks driving carbon export in the oligotrophic ocean. Nature. 532:465-470.
2. Brum, J.R.*, Ignacio-Espinoza, J.C.*, Roux, S.*, Doulcier, G., Acinas, S.G., Alberti, A., Chaffron, S., Cruaud, C., de Vargas, C., Gasol, J.M., Gorsky, G., Gregory, A.C., Guidi, L., Hingamp, P., Iudicone, D., Not, F., Ogata, H., Pesant, S., Poulos, B.T., Schwenck, S.M., Speich, S., Dimier, C., Kandels-Lewis, S., Picheral, M., Searson, S., Tara Oceans Coordinators, Bork, P., Bowler, C., Sunagawa, S., Wincker, P., Karsenti, E., & Sullivan, M.B. 2015. Patterns and ecological drivers of ocean viral communities. Science. 348: 1261498.
3. Hurwitz, B.L., Westveld, A.H., Brum, J.R., & Sullivan, M.B. 2014. Modeling ecological drivers in marine viral communities using comparative metagenomics and network analyses. PNAS. 111:10714–10719.
4. Roux, S., Brum, J.R., Dutilh, B.E., Sunagawa, S., Duhaime, M.B., Loy, A., Poulos, B.T., Solonenko, N., Lara, E., Poulain, J., Pesant, S., Kandels-Lewis, S., Dimier, C., Picheral, M., Searson, S., Cruaud, C., Alberti, A., Duarte, C.M.M., Gasol, J.M.M., Vaqué, D., Tara Oceans Coordinators, Bork, P., Acinas, S.G., Wincker, P. & Sullivan, M.B. 2016. Ecogenomics and potential biogeochemical impacts of globally abundant ocean viruses. Nature. 537: 689-693.

Interested in talking to:

• Scholars with knowledge of agent-based models of aggregation and/or dynamic network formation
• Medical microbiologists with interest in ascribing viral roles to complex diseases

warren.193@osu.edu Associate Professor, Social Work Keith Warren studies mutual aid based interventions for mental health and substance abuse problems. Such programs include self-help groups, therapeutic communities for substance abuse, sober living houses and clubhouses for people with chronic mental illness. Current foci are interpersonal cooperation among program clients and the outcomes of that cooperation. This work draws on evolutionary game theory, social network theory and mental health and substance abuse clinical theory and makes extensive use of social network analysis.

yerkes.1@osu.edu Professor, Department of Anthropology General areas of interest:

1. Archaeological studies of the processes leading to the emergence of socio-political complexity and institutionalized hereditary inequality in prehistoric societies.
2. Specific cases in prehistory when there were “false starts” toward social complexity, but hereditary inequality did not emerge, and heterarchical social organization and achievement-based social status persisted.

Some Recent Publications:

1. 2016. Diet, dispersal, and social Differentiation during the Copper Age in eastern Hungary. Antiquity 90(349): 81-94. (with Julia Giblin).
2. 2015. Settlement Nucleation in the Neolithic: A Preliminary Report of the Körös Regional Archaeological Project’s Investigations at Szeghalom-Kovácshalom and Vésztő-Mágor. In Neolithic and Copper Age between the Carpathians and the Aegean Sea. Chronologies and Technologies from the 6th to the 4th Millennium BCE. International Workshop Budapest 2012, edited by Svend Hansen, Pál Raczky, Alexandra Anders, and Agathe Reingruber, pp. 129-142. Archäologie in Eurasien 31. Verlag Dr. Rudolf Habelt, Bonn (with A. Gyucha, W. A. Parkinson, A. Sarris, N. Papadopoulos, P. R. Duffy, and R. B. Salisbury).
3. 2014. The Transition from the Late Neolithic to the Early Copper Age: Multidisciplinary Investigations in the Körös Region of the Great Hungarian Plain. In The Neolithic and Eneolithic in Southeastern Europe, New Approaches to Dating and Cultural Dynamics in the 6^th to 4^th Millennium BC, edited by W. Schier and F. Draşovean, pp. 273-296. Prähistorische Archäologie in Südosteuropa, Band 28, Verlag Marie Leidorf GmbH, Rahden/Westf (with A. Gyucha and   W. A. Parkinson).
4. 2013. Coming Together, Falling Apart: A Multi-Scalar Approach to Prehistoric Aggregation and Interaction on the Great Hungarian Plain. In From Prehistoric Villages to Cities: Settlement Aggregation and Community Transformation, edited by J. Birch, pp. 44-62. London: Routledge (with P. R. Duffy, W. A. Parkinson, and A. Gyucha).

Interested in talking to: Researchers employing different analytical models of population aggregation and changes in social inequality in past and present societies.