Welcome to my website! I am an applied mathematician and a theoretical biologist studying cooperation and collective behavior in complex systems. My work integrates tools from evolutionary game theory, dynamical systems, and network science to explore topics including

• the role of peer-to-peer gossip in cooperation;
• the impact of stereotype use on indirect reciprocity;
• cooperation and polarization in group-structured populations;
• emergent hierarchies in adaptive networks; and
• self-organized division of labor in ant colonies.

I obtained my PhD in applied and computational mathematics from Princeton University. Currently, I am a James S. McDonnell Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Biology at the University of Pennsylvania, where I work with Joshua Plotkin.

I will be joining the University of Michigan as a postdoctoral fellow (2026-27) and then as an assistant professor (2027-), with appointments in the Department of Mathematics and the Center for the Study of Complex Systems. My group will be recruiting at all levels. If you are interested in joining the group, please get in touch! I welcome inquiries from scholars of all backgrounds.

News

September 2025: I attended the Postdocs in Complexity Conference at the Santa Fe Institute.

May 2025: I gave a talk in the Prosocial Dynamics Lab, part of the Socially Intelligent Artificial Systems Group in the Informatics Institute at the University of Amsterdam.

May 2025: I attended the second Beijer Young Scholars workshop in Stockholm, Sweden.

May 2025: I attended the SIAM Conference on Applications of Dynamical Systems (DS25) in Denver, CO, where I gave a talk in the minisymposium on Dynamical Systems on Networks and Fractals (MS118) and served as a panelist in The Future of Interdisciplinary Research in Dynamical Systems: A Panel Discussion (PD1).

January 2025: I gave a talk at the Meiji Institute for Advanced Study of Mathematical Sciences (MIMS) in Tokyo, Japan.

October 2024: Our Research Briefing, “‘Look twice and forgive once’ when judging social behaviour” (with Sebastián Michel-Mata), is now published in Nature!

October 2024: “Ecological principles for the evolution of communication in collective systems” (with Merlijn Staps and Corina Tarnita) is now published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B!

September 2024: “The evolution of private reputations in information-abundant landscapes” led by Sebastián Michel-Mata is now published in Nature! Check out the Penn Today article about this work here.

September 2024: I attended Postdocs in Complexity: Global Summit at the Santa Fe Institute.

June 2024: I attended the SIAM Conference on the Life Sciences (LS24) in Portland, OR.

May 2024: I participated in the first Beijer Young Scholars workshop in Stockholm, Sweden.

May 2024: “A mechanistic model of gossip, reputations, and cooperation” (with Taylor Kessinger and Joshua Plotkin) is now published in PNAS! Check out the Penn Today article about this work here.