Research

Research Interests

My research interests are broad and interdisciplinary, but center around using mathematical tools to study applied problems. These tools include probability, game theory, data science, algorithms, graph theory, and statistics. I’m interested in problems from many different domains, including network science, social choice and the mathematics of democracy, quantitative social science, mathematical modeling, and human behavior.

Networks Papers

Bringing Leaders of Network Sub-Groups Closer Together Does Not Facilitate Consensus (with N. Christakis), Scientific Reports 14(30183), 2024 (pdf)

Simple Autonomous Agents can Enhance Creative Semantic Discovery by Human Groups (with A. Ueshima and N. Christakis), Nature Communications 15(5212), 2024 (pdf)

Containing Misinformation: Spatial Games of Fake News (with S. Pauls and F. Fu), PNAS Nexus 3(3), 2024 (pdf)

The dual problems of coordination and anti-coordination on random bipartite graphs (with S. Pauls and F. Fu), New Journal of Physics 23(113018), 2021 (pdf)

Random choices facilitate solutions to collective network coloring problems by artificial agents (with S. Pauls and F. Fu), iScience 24(4), 2021 (pdf)

Preprint - Counting Strict Gridlock on Graphs (with Z. Winkeler), arXiv: 2603.18289, 2026 (pdf)

Voting and Democracy Papers

New fairness criteria for truncated ballots in multi-winner ranked-choice elections (with A. Graham-Squire and D. McCune), Mathematical Social Sciences, 2026 (pdf)

Equilibria and Group Welfare in Vote Trading Systems, Social Choice and Welfare, 2026 (pdf)

Polarization, abstention, and the median voter theorem (with A. Sirianni and F. Fu), Humanities and Social Science Communications 9(43), 2022 (pdf)

Preprint - Candidate Moderation under Instant Runoff and Condorcet Voting: Evidence from the Cooperative Election Study (with D. McCune, A. Schultz, A. Graham-Squire, I. Volic, B. See, K. Xiao, and M. Mukundan), arXiv: 2603.03619, 2026 (pdf)

Preprint - It Is Easy For Multi-Issue Bundles To Advance Anti-Democratic Agendas (with M. Chervenak and N. Christakis), arXiv: 2307.11873, 2023 (pdf)

Other Projects

Estimating Recycling of Fish in Catch-and-Release Fisheries (with T. Jones, M. Treml, and T. Heinrich), Fisheries 47(12), 2022 (pdf)

Preprint - The Minimal Group Paradigm Revisited: On the Design and Testing of AI-Generated Preference-Indifferent Avatars for Online Experiments (with A. Oaks, K. Xu, F. Feng, and N. Christakis), SSRN: 5701822, 2025 (pdf)

Ph.D. Thesis

Here is a link to my Ph.D. thesis, titled Evolutionary Dynamics of Collective Action Problems (pdf)