Annual Symposium on Complexity in the Social World

Hiba Baroud

Vanderbilt University

Hiba Baroud holds secondary appointments in Computer Science and Earth and Environmental Science. Hiba is currently the interim director of the Vanderbilt Center for Sustainability, Energy, and Climate. Her research is at the intersection of data analytics and risk and resilience modeling.Her group develops and applies methods founded in statistical learning, network models, and decision analysis to evaluate infrastructure performance during disasters. She is particularly interested in uncertain and dynamic interdependencies across multiple systems (infrastructure, humans, environment). Applications are focused on smart cities, developing countries, and Arctic communities.

Christopher R. Browning

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Christopher R. Browning (Ph.D. University of Chicago, 1997) is University Distinguished Scholar and ASC Distinguished Professor of Sociology. His research interests include the causes and consequences of community social organization; the neighborhood context of crime, risk behavior, and health; and multilevel statistical models. His current projects apply the concepts of activity space and ecological networks to research on the mechanisms linking contextual exposures (e.g., neighborhoods and schools) to youth behavioral health and well-being.

Brian Burkhart

University of Oklahoma

Brian Burkhart is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at The University of Oklahoma and affiliated faculty in Native American Studies. He is the author of the book Indigenizing Philosophy through the Land: A Trickster Methodology for Decolonizing Environmental Ethics and Indigenous Futures published by Michigan State University Press. He mentors PhD students studying Native American and Indigenous philosophy.

Carson Byrd

University of Michigan

Carson Byrd’s research examines racism in higher education and society, the racialization of science and knowledge production, and critical quantitative methods for studying inequality. His current projects explore how affirmative-action bans affect students’ degree pathways and experiences, as well as how departmental climates in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) contribute to racial inequities. His research has received funding from the National Science Foundation and the Spencer Foundation. He was also selected as a William T. Grant Advanced Quantitative and Computational Scholar.

Kate Cagney

University of Michigan

Kathleen Cagney was named the Director of the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research effective September 1, 2021. Professor Cagney’s work examines social inequality and its relationship to health with a focus on neighborhood, race, and aging, and the life course. She has developed a series of papers on neighborhood social capital and its relationship to outcomes such as self-rated health, asthma prevalence, physical activity, and mortality during the 1995 Chicago heatwave. She also focuses on the validity of such measures and the development of new neighborhood-based metrics that reflect the perceptions and experiences of older residents. She holds research professorships in ISR’s Survey Research Center and Population Studies Center.

Gregory Fulkerson

SUNY Oneonta

Dr. Fulkerson is involved in research related to Community Development and Planning, primarily through the PLACES Institute. The Vibrant Communities Program is the basis for this research. I am also part of the research team studying the impacts of COVID on the local region (through ICIC and now CIRC). He is also continuing work in the area of Urban-Rural Sociology.

Robert Goodspeed

University of Michigan

Robert Goodspeed is an Associate Professor of Urban Planning. He teaches in the areas of geographic information systems (GIS), collaborative planning, and scenario planning theory and methods. His research investigates how new information technologies can be used to improve the planning process and planning outcomes, and involves mixed-methods studies of innovative urban planning practice, the use of GIS to develop novel methods, and theoretical analysis of sociotechnical practices like crowdfunding and smart cities. He was named a Leading Thinker in Urban Planning and Technology by the website Planetizen.

Ben Green

University of Michigan

Ben Green is an Assistant Professor of Information and Public Policy at the University of Michigan and a Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard. Through his research, writing, and advocacy, Ben contributes practical lessons for achieving a world in which AI improves society rather than exacerbating inequality and oppression. He has published op-eds in outlets including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Hill, and has been quoted in newspapers such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times. He is the author of two books from the MIT Press: Algorithmic Realism: Data Science Practices to Promote Social Justice (2026) and The Smart Enough City: Putting Technology in Its Place to Reclaim Our Urban Future (2019).

Maggie Hicken

University of Michigan

Through her entire research program, Margaret Hicken is committed to clarifying the social causes and biological mechanisms underlying population patterns in health. The major hallmark of her research is the integration of scientific knowledge from across disciplines, as this transdisciplinary approach allows for creative and innovative insights into the root drivers of these patterns. She has built, from the ground up, a research program around her conceptual framework that integrates humanist and social science scholarship on US society to the biological literature on stress biology, molecular mechanisms, and health. For example, her research suggests that social exposures amplify the health impact of environmental exposures, providing important evidence that multiple features of American society operate together to drive population health patterns.

Darrell Hudson

University of Michigan

Darrell Hudson, PhD, MPH is Professor and Chair of the Department of Health Behavior and Health Equity at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. Prior to his appointment at Michigan, he was Professor of Public Health at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis and Director for the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity, and Equity at Washington University. Dr. Hudson’s career is dedicated to the elimination of racial/ethnic inequities in health. His research agenda centers on how social determinants of health, particularly racism, affect multiple health outcomes. Dr. Hudson is also striving to develop researchers and professionals who are both well trained and passionate about achieving health equity.

Dr. Hudson’s published research includes studies that have examined racial/ethnic differences in depression, including the effects of socioeconomic position, racial discrimination, and coping behaviors on depression. His current work focuses on the investigation of how the process of upward social mobility affects the health and well-being of Black Americans. He is also investigating the integration of mental and physical health using a life course, stress framework. Dr. Hudson has been awarded grants from the National Institutes of Health, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Kellogg Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Foundation for Barnes Jewish Hospital, and the Missouri Foundation for Health. Currently, his research is supported by the National Institute on Aging, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Dr. Hudson completed his doctoral studies at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, where he also received his MPH. He earned a BA in Psychology from Morehouse College. Prior to his faculty appointment, Dr. Hudson completed a postdoctoral fellowship with the Kellogg Health Scholars Program at the University of California at the San Francisco and Berkeley campuses.

Quinn Hunter

University of Michigan

Quinn Alexandria Hunter is a sculpture and performance artist who works primarily with hair and the African American female body as material. She was born and raised in Charlotte, North Carolina, and did her MFA work at Ohio University. Recipient of the I. Hollis Parry/Ann Parry Billman Award (2019), Quinn has exhibited and performed nationally. She is interested in the erasure of history from spaces, and how the contemporary uses of space impacts the way we, as a culture, see the past.

Her practice revolves around uncovering and unveiling truths. Digging into the histories of African Americans to find spaces and memories that have been lost, erased, or covered. With that information, she makes work that references specific spaces in the area to bring forth information that has been lost to time and erasure. Contending with erasure of Black bodies from historic and contemporary spaces, Hunter looks at the way erasure of historic labor is connected to the contemporary and how it affects space around us. The erasing of labor renders bodies, the spaces they work in, and the work itself, invisible. This erasure of labor is amplified in the labor done by women of color, in particular, the labor done by African American women in contemporary and historic domestic spaces. Through the use of her own labor and material resistance, she is combating and interrupting erasure by reinscribing the erased labor of historic African American women and allowing their work to be remembered through her own contemporary labor.

Trevon D. Logan

National Bureau of Economic Research

Trevon D. Logan is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He has held visiting appointments at Princeton University’s Center for Health and Well-Being and at the University of Michigan, where he was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholar in Health Policy Research. He is also an affiliate of the Initiative in Population Research, the Center for Human Resource Research, the Food Innovation Center, and the Criminal Justice Research Center at Ohio State. He currently serves on the editorial boards of Explorations in Economic History, Historical Methods and Demographic Research.

Professor Logan specializes in economic history, economic demography and applied microeconomics. His research in economic history concerns the development of living standards measures that can be used to directly asses the question of how the human condition has changed over time. He applies the techniques of contemporary living standard measurements to the past as a means of deriving consistent estimates of well-being over time. Most of his historical work uses historical household surveys, but also includes some new data to look at topics such as the returns to education in the early twentieth century, the formation of tastes, and the allocation of resources within the household. He is currently extending his historical research agenda to include topics such as childhood health, mortality, morbidity, and racial disparities in health

Rick Lowe

Gagosian Gallery

Rick Lowe is a Houston-based artist known for community-centered projects. In 1993, he founded Project Row Houses, an arts and cultural community in Houston’s historic Third Ward. His work has been presented internationally at the Gwangju Biennale, Venice Architecture Biennale, and Documenta 14. Lowe has led collaborative projects across the United States, using art to advance community development and social change. His honors include the Heinz Award, Creative Time Annenberg Prize, and MacArthur Fellowship. Appointed by President Barack Obama to the National Council on the Arts, he later became an associate professor of art at the University of Houston.

Quynh Nguyen

National Institute of Nursing Research

Quynh Nguyen, Ph.D., MSPH, is an intramural investigator at NINR and director of the HashtagHealth Lab. Dr. Nguyen’s research utilizes advanced data science methods—including artificial intelligence and machine learning—to analyze large-scale, multimodal datasets and develop technology-driven health interventions. Her work enables the identification of broad patterns influencing health outcomes and informs the creation of targeted, precision health strategies. Prior to joining NINR, Dr. Nguyen served on the faculty at the University of Maryland School of Public Health and the University of Utah College of Health. She has led multiple research projects as Principal Investigator, including a Big Data to Knowledge Initiative career development award (K01ES025433) and R01 grants from the National Library of Medicine (R01LM012849) and the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (R01MD016037). Dr. Nguyen earned her bachelor’s degree in Human Biology from Stanford University and her master’s and doctoral degrees in Epidemiology from the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health.

Stephen Raudenbush

University of Chicago

Stephen Raudenbush is the Lewis-Sebring Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Sociology, the College and the Harris School of Public Policy Studies.

He is interested in statistical models for child and youth development within social settings such as classrooms, schools, and neighborhoods. He is best known for his work developing hierarchical linear models, with broad applications in the design and analysis of longitudinal and multilevel research. He is currently studying the development of literacy and math skills in early childhood with implications for instruction; and methods for assessing school and classroom quality. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences the recipient of the American Educational Research Association award for Distinguished Contributions to Educational Research.

Elizabeth Roberto

Rice University

Dr. Elizabeth Roberto is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Rice University, the founding Co-Director of the Center for Computational Insights on Inequality and Society (CIISR), and the Director of the Spatial Inequality Lab. Her research examines the complex relationship between the social and built environment of cities, with a focus on residential segregation and computational social science.

Sean Valles

Michigan State University

Sean A. Valles is a philosopher of health specializing in the ethical and evidentiary complexities of how social contexts—everything from one’s local food options to the presence or absence of exposure to violent policing practices—combine to create patterns of inequitable health disparities. His work includes studying the challenges of responsibly using race and ethnicity concepts in monitoring health disparities, scrutinizing the rhetoric of the COVID-19 pandemic as an ‘unprecedented’ problem that could not be prepared for, and examining how biomedicine meshes with public health and population health. He is author of the 2018 book, Philosophy of Population Health: Philosophy for a New Public Health Era. He is also co-editor (with Quill R. Kukla) of the Oxford University Press book series “Bioethics for Social Justice.”

Ericka Weathers

University of Pennsylvania

Ericka Weathers is an assistant professor in Penn GSE’s Policy, Organizations, Leadership, and Systems division. She studies the causes and consequences of inequality in K–12 education as well as the effects of K–12 policies on student and school outcomes.

Professor Weathers’ work has been funded by the Russell Sage Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Pennsylvania Department of Education. She serves on the editorial board of Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis and co-chairs the Association of Education Finance and Policy’s Scholars of Color Community Group. Professor Weathers was named a 2021 Spencer Foundation/National Academy of Education postdoctoral fellow for her work on racial disparities in special education decision points.