About

I am a research scientist at the MIT Media Lab in the Scalable Cooperation Group, an interdisciplinary lab of social, natural, and computer scientists focused on addressing large-scale cooperation challenges.

I am an affiliate at Harvard University’s Belfer Center, where I completed my postdoctoral training in 2017. I am also an affiliate at the Harvard University Center for the Environment and am a Human-Environmental Systems Fellow at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. I received my PhD in political science from the University of California San Diego in 2016.

In my work, I combine my interests in climate change and human behavior with my affinity for social scientific and computational methods.

My primary research explores the societal impacts of climate change. I have studied the potential for climatic changes to alter rates of democratic turnover and human sleep, mood, and physical activity patterns. In my current work, I am examining potential climate impacts on mental health, local governance, and human population distributions.

Another branch of my research focuses on climate change attitudes. A recent project examined the role of collective versus personal responsibility in climate-related political behaviors. Another investigates how climate change political attitudes may be altered by exposure to extreme weather. I have also identified political hurdles to climate policies in Sub-Saharan Africa.