Data-rich human communication

As a cognitive scientist and data scientist, I take a data-rich approach to understanding how people collaborate, bond, and fight. To do that, I weave together a variety of data sources from the lab and the real world for a converging tapestry of the many ways in which our language, movement, decisions, and emotions change during social contact. Understanding how context—including conversational goals, social connections, and physical spaces—shape our emerging behaviors is a primary goal of my research, embedded within rich traditions of dynamical and ecological perspectives on human behavior and cognition broadly.

I also develop methods to quantify social interaction, promote open science research and education, and create opportunities for cognitive scientists and psychologists who are interested in data science, naturally occurring data, and big data, with a special focus on data ethics. Advocating for diversity, equity, and inclusion is an essential part of my scholarly, mentoring, and pedagogical work.

About me

I’m an assistant professor in the University of Connecticut’s Department of Psychological Sciences, specifically within the Perception, Action, Cognition division. I am affiliated with the Center for the Ecological Study of Perception and Action; the Institute for Collaboration on Health, Intervention, and Policy; the Connecticut Institute for the Brain and Cognitive Sciences; and the Cognitive Science program. I am also a faculty mentor in the Science of Learning and Art of Communication training program.

I’m proud to lead the dyscord lab. Together, we explore the dynamics of social communication and inter-organism dependencies. Our lab includes several graduate students — Megan Chiovaro, Caitrín (“Cat”) Hall, and Gray Thomas — and a number of bright and hard-working current and former undergraduate research assistants. You can find out more about our community and our work at our lab website. (If you’re an undergraduate student interested in working with the lab, please fill out this form.)

I am actively recruiting graduate students! If you are interested in working with me, I encourage you to reach out to me by email. I’d love to hear about your interests, how they fit with my lab’s interests, and what you might be passionate about pursuing as part of our community.

Previously, I was a postdoctoral scholar working with Tom Griffiths in the Institute of Cognitive and Brain Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley and a Moore-Sloan Data Science Fellow at the Berkeley Institute for Data Science. I received my Ph.D in Cognitive and Information Sciences working with Rick Dale at the University of California, Merced.

Some recent work