David Lazer is a distinguished professor of political science and computer and information science at

Northeastern University Northeastern University (NU) is a private university, private research university with its main campus in Boston. Established in 1898, the university offers undergraduate and graduate programs on its main campus as well as satellite campuses in ...

, as well as the co-director of the NULab of Texts, Maps, and Networks.

Life

Early life and education

David Lazer obtained a bachelor of arts in economics in 1988 from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. He subsequently received his Ph.D. in political science in 1996 from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Career

Lazer's first academic position after graduate school was as a lecturer at Princeton University's Department of Politics, where he taught from 1996 to 1998. In 1998 he became an assistant professor of public policy at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, and was promoted to associate professor in 2003. Lazer left Harvard in 2009 to join the faculty at Northeastern University, where he received dual-appointments in the Department of Political Science and the College of Computer and Information Science. Lazer was promoted to full professor in 2012 and to distinguished professor in 2014.

Areas of research

Lazer is particularly well known for his research on

computational social science Computational social science is the academic sub-discipline concerned with computational approaches to the social sciences. This means that computers are used to model, simulate, and analyze social phenomena. Fields include computational economics ...

, stemming from his 2009 article "Life in the network: the coming age of computational social science". Lazer has published numerous articles on elections in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. One study he co-authored in 2010 found that Americans are more willing to deliberate with congressional leaders than had previously been expected.Neblo, M., Esterling, K., Kennedy, R., Lazer, D., & Sokhey, A. (2010). Who wants to deliberate - and why?. AmericanPolitical Science Review, 104(3), 566-583. doi: 10.1017/S0003055410000298

References

* https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=gMndACUAAAAJ&hl=en {{DEFAULTSORT:Lazer, David American computer scientists Northeastern University faculty Living people Year of birth missing (living people) University of Michigan alumni Network scientists