Game theory, artificial intelligence, agent-based models, genetic algorithms.

I’m a trained philosopher, but, besides conceptual problems, I care for conclusions based on systematic observations and I also care for the applicability of those conclusions. One might say that I wish I were a behavioral economist, or maybe an ethologist/behavioral ecologist.

My dissertation research at the Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy focuses on food safety and consumer choices, using agent-based models as a novel method for investigating this policy space.

I study human dimensions of natural resource management and resource use by under-represented populations—often in developing nations—to enhance our understanding of conflicts involving land use, natural resources, and conservation from an interdisciplinary, systematic lens. My research spans subjects such as common pool resource management and policy, decentralization, and land use/land cover change drivers and trends relating to population rise and environmental change.

I am interested in questions of method, and in the application of computational social models to a wide variety of national security questions (such as counterterrorism and counterinsurgency) as well as decision-making around complex natural resources such as water. My methods interest center on the use of qualitative social theory to inform the structure of computational social models, and the ways in which such models handle qualitative data. This raises questions around the nature of data and the ways in which computational social models convey information to decision-makers.