Devon Brackbill

I earned my PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, where my research focused on Computational Social Science as part of the Network Dynamics Group. My research has been published in Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and elsewhere.

I am currently a data scientist at Facebook, where I work on integrity problems for Instagram.

Research

My research sits at the intersection of the social sciences, physics, and computer science. I am interested in how individual actions give rise to collective phenomena in large populations. Applications include the complex interplay of social forces that produce collective intelligence, group problem-solving, consensus formation, and social norms in human social systems.

To understand the dynamics of such systems, I rely on agent-based models to gain theoretical traction on a social behavior. Then, I test these ideas using online experiments to see if these theories hold true.

See the Research tab for more information.