James Evans

Director, Knowledge Lab; Max Palevsky Professor, Sociology, University of Chicago; Fellow, Computation Institute; Co-Director, Masters in Computational Social Science Program

Social Sciences Research Building
Room 420
(773) 702-9168

Dr. Evans is the Director of the Knowledge Lab, a Fellow in the Computation Institute, and the Co-Director for the Masters in Computational Social Science Program. In addition to his leadership duties, Dr. Evans is a Max Palevsky Professor in Sociology with research that focuses on the collective system of thinking and knowing, ranging from the distribution of attention and intuition, the origin of ideas and shared habits of reasoning to processes of agreement (and dispute), accumulation of certainty (and doubt), and the texture—novelty, ambiguity, topology—of human understanding. He is especially interested in innovation—how new ideas and practices emerge—and the role that social and technical institutions (e.g., the Internet, markets, collaborations) play in collective cognition and discovery. For more information, visit his homepage.

James Evans, Co-Director of MACSS; Director, Knowledge Lab; Max Palevsky Professor, Sociology, University of Chicago; Fellow, Computation Institute

Marc Berman

Co-Director, Masters in Computational Social Science Program; Director of the Environmental Neuroscience Lab; Associate Professor of Psychology

Green 416
(773) 702-1436

Dr. Berman is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology, Co-Director for the Masters in Computational Social Science Program, and Director of the Environmental Neuroscience Lab. He is involved in the Cognition, Social and Integrative Neuroscience programs. Understanding the relationship between individual psychological and neural processing and environmental factors lies at the heart of his research. In his lab they utilize brain imaging, behavioral experimentation, computational neuroscience and statistical models to quantify the person, the environment and their interactions. For more information, please visit his homepage.

Faculty Co-Director for the Masters in Computational Social Science Program; Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology

Luc Anselin

Stein-Freiler Distinguished Service Professor of Sociology and the College; Director, Center for Spatial Data Science; Senior Fellow, NORC; Faculty Chair, Geographical Sciences; and Executive Committee, Masters in Computational Social Science Program

McGiffert Hall
5751 S. Woodlawn Avenue, Room 211

Dr. Anselin is the Stein-Freiler Distinguished Service Professor of Sociology and the College, the Director of the Center for Spatial Data Science, a Senior Fellow at NORC, the Faculty Chair for the Committee on Geographical Sciences, and an Executive Committee member of the Masters in Computational Social Science Program. An expert in spatial econometrics, he was the founding director of the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning at Arizona State University. He previously held appointments at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, the University of Texas at Dallas, West Virginia University, the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the Ohio State University. Anselin's focus in the analysis of spatial data (i.e., data containing a specific location) ranges from exploration to visualization and modeling. Anselin looks at the development of appropriate methods, as well as their implementation in open source software and application in empirical studies. Specific application fields include environmental and natural resource economics, real estate economics, economics of innovation, criminology, public health, electoral studies and international relations. For more information, visit his homepage.

Luc Anselin, Stein-Freiler Distinguished Service Professor of Sociology and the College; Director, Center for Spatial Data Science; Senior Fellow, NORC; Executive Committee, Masters in Computational Social Science Program

Guanglei Hong

Professor, Department of Comparative Human Development and the College Committee on Education; Executive Committee for Computational Social Science

Dr. Hong is a Professor in the Department of Comparative Human Development and the College; and the Committee on Education. She has focused her research on developing causal inference theories and methods for evaluating educational and social policies and programs in multi-level, longitudinal settings. Her work addresses issues including (1) how to conceptualize and evaluate the causal effects of treatments when individual responses to alternative treatments depend on various features of the organizational settings, (2) how to adjust for selection bias in estimating the effects of concurrent multi-valued treatments, (3) how to evaluate the cumulative effects of time-varying treatments, and (4) how to conceptualize and analyze the causal mediation mechanisms. For more information, visit her homepage.

Guanglei Hong, Professor, Department of Comparative Human Development and the College Committee on Education

Ali Hortaçsu

Ralph and Mary Otis Isham Professor in Economics and the College (at Chicago since 2001); Editor, Journal of Political Economy; Executive Committee Member, Masters in Computational Social Science Program

Dr. Hortaçsu's work is focused on empirically assessing the efficiency of markets, utilizing detailed micro-level data from the markets he studies to estimate preference and technology parameters that rationalize individual behavior and then use the estimated preferences and technological parameters to construct (constrained) “efficient” benchmarks and assess how far observed market outcomes are from efficiency. This framework has been applied to many market settings, including financial markets, energy markets, the internet, and a variety of market clearing mechanisms, including auctions, matching, and costly search. His current research interests include industrial organization; auctions; search and matching models; production and financial networks; applications in finance, energy markets and the internet. For more information, visit his homepage.

Ali Hortaçsu, Executive Committee Member, MACSS; Ralph and Mary Otis Isham Professor in Economics and the College (at Chicago since 2001); Editor, Journal of Political Economy

Leslie M. Kay

Professor of Psychology; Executive Committee Member, Masters in Computational Social Science Program

Dr. Kay has been at the University of Chicago since 2000, and her laboratory studies olfactory and limbic system neurophysiology, focusing on the mechanisms and functions associated with intra- and inter-regional oscillatory cooperativity. Kay received her BA in Liberal Arts from St. John's College in Santa Fe, New Mexico and then worked for the original GenBank project at Los Alamos National Laboratory from 1982-85. She worked as a programmer/analyst in business applications for a number of years in the mid- to-late eighties, and then returned to graduate school at UC Berkeley. She completed her dissertation research in the laboratory of Walter J. Freeman, and received her PhD in Biophysics in 1995. Her postdoctoral research was completed in the laboratory of Gilles Laurent at the California Institute of Technology, where she studied olfactory bulb mitral cell responses to changes in odor context. For more information, visit her homepage.

Leslie M. Kay, Professor of Psychology; Executive Committee Member, Masters in Computational Social Science Program

Howard Nusbaum

Professor, Department of Psychology and in the College; Committee on Computational Neuroscience; Executive Committee Member, Masters in Computational Social Science Program

Dr. Nusbaum is a Professor in the Department of Psychology and in the College; Committee on Computational Neuroscience; and an Executive Committee Member of the Masters in Computational Social Science Program. His research interests include: wisdom, language use, attention, learning, memory consolidation and sleep, working memory, understanding, affect, categorization, cognitive neuropharmocology, cognitive engineering and human factors. For more information, visit his faculty page.

Howard Nusbaum, Professor, Department of Psychology and in the College; Committee on Computational Neuroscience

John Padgett

Professor, Department of Political Science and the College; Executive Committee Member, Masters in Computational Social Science Program

Dr. Padgett is a Professor in Political Science and the College, specializing in American politics, organizational theory, mathematical models, and public policy. He also serves as an Executive Committee Member of the Masters in Computational Social Science Program. He is best known for his models of the federal budget process, although he has written on a variety of topics. The American Journal of Sociology published both his 1993 article "Robust Action and the Rise of the Medici, 1400-1434" and his 1985 essay "The Emergent Organization of Plea Bargaining." He is a Director of the Organizations and State-Building Workshop. For more information, visit his homepage.

John Padgett, Professor, Department of Political Science and the College; Executive Committee Member, Masters in Computational Social Science Program

Stephen W. Raudenbush

Lewis-Sebring Distinguished Service Professor, Department of Sociology, the College, and the Harris School of Public Policy; Chair, Committee on Education, Executive Committee Member, Masters in Computational Social Science Program

Dr. Raudenbush is the Lewis-Sebring Distinguished Service Professor for the Department of Sociology, the College, and the Harris School of Public Policy. He is also the Chair of the Committee on Education and an Executive Committee Member of the Masters in Computational Social Science Program. His research interests include Education, Social Theory, Inequality, Urban Sociology, Family, Neighborhood, School, Classroom, Early and Middle Childhood, Adolescence, Causal Inference, and Educational Disparities. For more information, visit his homepage.

Stephen W. Raudenbush, Lewis-Sebring Distinguished Service Professor, Department of Sociology, the College, and the Harris School of Public Policy Studies