Research Interests

I study civic technology–how people use technology to cooperate meaningfully within their communities (CV). My current research uses network science, complex systems, and social choice theory to study the governance of large-scale, internet-enabled communities (e.g., Wikipedia, Occupy). I recently finished a PhD at the University of Michigan School of Information, advised by Daniel M. Romero. Formerly, I worked as a staff researcher at the MIT Center for Civic Media. I've arrived here by way of physics and computer science (S.B. MIT, 2006) and applied math (M.Math Waterloo, 2009). In the past, I've also done research on fault-tolerance and quantum computing.

Some of my specific interests include: large-scale deliberation, participatory governance, complex network analysis, agent-based models, collective-intelligence.

Publications