I am a Senior Researcher in the Department of Political Science at the University of Zurich. Prior to this, I held postdoctoral appointments at Harvard University, Princeton University, and Indiana University. I obtained my PhD in Computational Social Science from George Mason University, where I was affiliated with the Social Complexity Lab and served as a visiting researcher at the Social Dynamics Lab at Cornell University. I also hold an MSc in Information Science from the University of Pittsburgh, with additional research affiliation at the Agent-Robotics Technology Lab at Carnegie Mellon University.
My research sits at the intersection of AI, Computational Social Science, and Governance. My work develops frameworks for evaluating emergent capabilities, safety, and alignment in LLMs and investigates the broader sociotechnical conditions that shape their safe and ethical integration into society.
Download my CV .
Ph.D. in Computational Social Science, 2016
George Mason University
M.Sc. in Information Science, 2012
University of Pittsburgh
M.Sc. in Industrial Engineering, 2009
Amirkabir University of Technology
B.Sc. in Industrial Engineering, 2007
Amirkabir University of Technology
1. World Bank’s Development Impact Evaluation (DIME):
– Tidying Data1. On non-standard errors:
3. Thomas Brambor, William Roberts Clark and Matt Golder, “Understanding Interaction Models: Imroving Empirical Analyses”,Political Analysis14(1):2006.
1. Introductory Online Courses:
– Chris Bail’s Text as Data course2. Online Open Access Book:
– Speech and Language Processing (3rd Edition), Jurafsky and Martin3. Data Collection
– Chapter 17 (Collecting Data from the Web) of Rochelle Terman’s PLSC 31101: Computational Tools for Social Science course notes4. Topic Modeling
– David M. Blei, “Surveying a suite of algorithms that offer a solution to managing large document archives,”Communications of the ACM55(4):20125. Free Seminars:
– NLP + CSS Tutorials6. Useful R and Python packages:
– Interactive LDA Visualization7. Other Useful Resources:
– LearningregexAI Solutions Seek To Advance Real World Asset Tokenization , CryptoNews, 9 May 2024.
Tokenization News Roundup: Resource Extraction, Social Media Monetization and Real World Connections , Yahoo! Finance, 24 August 2023.
Twitter: all right under Elon Musk? , France24, 25 May 2023.
ChatGPT is coming for your jobs – the terrible ones, at least , The Register, 3 April 2023.
ChatGPT outperforms humans at labelling some data for other AIs , New Scientist, 29 March 2023.
ChatGPT Can Replace the Underpaid Workers Who Train AI, Researchers Say , VICE, 29 March 2023.
Tracking the trolls , BBC Digital Planet, 29 July 2020.
A weather forecast for fake news outbreaks on social media is coming , New Scientist, 29 July 2020.
KI-System erkennt Posts von Trollen und Bots , Bild Der Wissenschaft, 27 July 2020.
Russland-Affäre: Algorithmus erkennt Trolle in staatlichem Auftrag , Deutschlandfunk Forschung Aktuell, 23 July 2020.
AI system detects posts by foreign ‘trolls’ on Facebook and Twitter , The Guardian, 22 July 2020.
Chinese and Russian Trolls Trying to Influence 2020 Election Could Be Hunted with AI Tool , Newsweek, 22 July 2020.
Tracking Disinformation Using Digital Fingerprints , Inverse, 22 July 2020.
Workshop on The Future of Social Media Research, Oxford Internet Institute, 2025.
Transversal Research Priorities Areas Keynote Series, University of Zurich, 2024.
Workshop on What Policies Can Promote Healthy AI?, Consensus Event, USA, 2024.
Workshop on Safeguarding Democracy from Online Disinformation, Digital Services Act Stakeholder Event, European Commission, Belgium, 2023.
Microsoft Seminar Series, Microsoft, WA, 2020.
Center for Information Technology Policy Seminar Series, Princeton, 2020.
Center for Social Media and Politics, NYU, 2019.
Office:
Digital Democracy Lab
Department of Political Science
University of Zurich
Affolternstrasse 56, AFL-H-353
8050 Zürich, Switzerland