Research
My work sits at the intersection of collective intelligence, computational social science, and governance. I study how groups make decisions and how those mechanisms can be improved or applied to public institutions. Most recently I have become interested in wilderness search and rescue — how these volunteer organizations govern themselves and work alongside local and federal law enforcement.
Projects
Wilderness Search & Rescue Governance
An emerging strand of my research. Volunteer wilderness search and rescue teams set their own rules, decide who leads, and hold each other accountable without formal legal authority — yet in the field they operate alongside local sheriffs and federal agencies that do carry it. I am interested in how these groups construct and sustain that internal authority, and what happens where it meets the command structures of law enforcement. I am currently developing the research design for this project.
Defense Industrial Base Institute
Doctoral research assistantship on an interview-based study of the defense industrial base. I conduct and code research interviews, assemble locale-specific data to inform the project, and contribute to reports and other written outputs.
Pandemic Supermind & Trust CoLab
Two large-scale collective intelligence activations applied to public health. The Pandemic Supermind convened distributed contributors to identify critical unmet needs arising from COVID-19, generating ideas across five domains: diagnostics and monitoring, viral transmission control, therapies and vaccines, communicating scientific insight, and pandemic preparedness. The companion Trust CoLab sourced scenarios for the future of public trust in healthcare and medicine.
Supermind Design in Professional Services
A field application of Supermind Design — a method for configuring new combinations of people and computers that are more collectively intelligent than their predecessors — carried out with professionals at Deloitte. The work tested whether a structured design approach could introduce fresh thinking and creative problem-solving into an established organization.
AI for Leadership
Implementation and evaluation of an AI education program built for organizational leaders, delivered in partnership with the US Air Force and developed with colleagues across MIT Open Learning and the MIT Media Lab. I co-designed and developed new software features to enable AI learning journeys through the program.
Working Papers & Publications
Using Collective Intelligence to Assess the Future with the Pandemic Supermind
In S. Boucher, C. A. Hallin, & L. Paulson (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Collective Intelligence for Democracy and Governance, ch. 39. Routledge, 2023.
AI for Leadership: Implementation and Evaluation of an AI Education Program
In Proceedings of the 51st Annual Conference of the European Society for Engineering Education (SEFI), Dublin, Ireland, 2023.
Supermind Design for Inventing Smarter Organizations: Applying a New Organizational Design Approach in a Professional Services Setting
SSRN working paper, December 2023.
Using a Supermind to Design a Supermind: A Case Study of University Researchers and Corporate Executives Co-Designing an Innovative Healthcare Concept
SSRN working paper, 2020.
Talks & Presentations
Minds and Tech: AI Solutions
Invited speaker. Toulouse, France, 2019.
Overcoming Top-Down Nationalism with Collective Governance
New York State Political Science Association, 2019.
A Comparative Analysis of Demographic Stratification and Roles in “Homegrown” Jihadist Organizations
Paper presentation (co-author). Conference of the Research Area “Migration and Diversity”, 2018.
The Socioeconomic Divide: The Differences Between Development in Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa
Paper presentation. American Association of Geographers, 2017. Also presented at the Boston College Growing Apart Conference (2016) and as a graduate panelist at the Northeastern Political Science Association (2016).
Environmental Politics: EU ETS
Undergraduate panelist. Northeastern Political Science Association, 2015.