I am a social scientist and statistician studying persuasion and social influence that is mediated, amplified, or directed by interactive technologies. The design of new interactions, interventions, and methods is sometimes both a means and an end. I work on the Facebook Data Science Team. I recently finished my PhD in the CHIMe Lab at Stanford University.

The principal subjects of my research are

  1. social interactions and influence through communication technologies
  2. persuasive strategies implemented with interactive technologies
  3. applied statistics and causal inference, especially for 1 and 2

In particular, I have studied how interactive technologies can be designed to change people’s attitudes and behaviors — whether by transforming and influencing their communications with others or by cuing them to treat systems and services as if they were human. Within this area, I have worked on mobile persuasive technologies, self-disclosure and sharing behaviors, persuasion profiling, and peer influence in online social networks. Some recent work, including my dissertation research, develops and evaluates research designs and methods of analysis for this work.

I was previously a member of the research staff at Nokia Research Center, Palo Alto. Before joining Nokia, I co-directed the mobile persuasion research program in the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab and worked at Yahoo! Research Berkeley on mobile photo sharing services.

I use my blog, Ready-to-hand, and Twitter to share new ideas and report on research in an immediate and less formal way than scholarly publications.