About Me

(in about 262 words)

Welcome!

I am an Assistant Professor of Social Research and Public Policy at New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) and an Affiliate Faculty at the Center for Data Science at New York University (NYU). I earned my PhD in Information Science at Cornell University, where I was very fortunate to be advised by Michael W. Macy and Mor Naaman.


My general areas of interest are computational social science and human-centered data science. I develop and apply quantitative and computational methods to understand the social and social psychological mechanisms that underlie how people construct meaning and consequently pursue action, espeically through domains of creative work (e.g., music, food, fashion, and science). My research is deeply informed by insights from sociology and social computing. There are three strands to my work:

  • understanding the relationship between social position and cultural taste at multiple levels of analysis (e.g., individual and cross-national);

  • modeling and analyzing the dynamics of preferences (e.g., daily and seasonal patterns of variety-seeking behaviors and affective preference as self-exposure to external stimuli such as music);

  • addressing prevalent challenges in the use of social media data (e.g., imputing user attributes such as socioeconomic status) as well as enhancing the interpretability of machine learning models.

I am into

  • Taste and fashion research
  • Indie music
  • Basketball
  • Arsenal Football Club
  • Brewing
  • Planting