Research & Interests

General Research Theme

My general research theme can be summarized as being at the intersection of the social and computer sciences, the qualitative and the quantitative, the individual and the system, the micro and the macro, the deterministic and the stochastic. Those are not equivalent themes, of course, but I find the tension between two competing forces to almost always be of interest.  Interestingly, career-wise I’ve chosen a line of research that represents the intersecting areas between two fields, namely agent-based simulations and social network analysis (network science).
Within that intersection I find problems that intersect the natural/physical science view of network science (complex networks) and the classical view of network science (broadly speaking constructed by computational sociologists et. al.) to be of interest. In layman terms, I enjoy understanding the node and I enjoy knowing more about the experience of that node under certain system-level conditions. Most importantly, the interplay between them is of significant interest to me.
The combination of the agent perspective and network science opens the door to exploring this interplay….

Social Network Analysis

I consider myself knowledgeable in the area of social network analysis methodology, theory and applications but most importantly the history of the field – that’s where I really shine at this stage in my personal development.

I began studying, working with data and taking courses in 2008, and have continued to this present day. It’s an area that I’m deeply passionate about. I utilize UCINET, Pajek, Gephi, R, Python, Java, ORA, and Nodexl in my analysis.

Agent-based Modeling

Agent-based modeling is a simulation-based methodology by which you can create agents in an environment with rules of behavior. When the simulation is run, we can emerge interesting macro patterns. It is a way of exploring systems from the ground up.

 

Geographic Information Systems

This is an area of recent interest. It began when I decided to model a ride sharing service (Uber or Lyft) in the Washington, DC area, and began to like the process of modeling GIS systems. There’s some interesting work being done in this area, mainly in the autonomous vehicle area, so I plan to continue my work in this area.

Terrorism and Extremism

In 2015, I was introduced to the concept of terrorism and media propaganda. My work in this area was immediately accepted by an international community of scholars and military practitioners. It’s an area that I’d like to continue working in but from a limited perspective.

Other Areas

I’m also interested in economic networks, big data, and information theory.