My interests are in the elucidation of scientific principles behind interesting phenomena in the cognitive and social sciences. I use primarily computational means to field models and test hypotheses.
In a previous life (pre-2002), I worked on nanotechnology and nanolithography. I received my Masters Degree for work on technology related to sub-nanometer placement in electron beam lithography, and I served for a brief stint as a senior engineer and vice operations officer at a nanotechnology startup company. But of late my research interests have moved to less scientifically mature fields: cognitive science and social science.
My
recent research has focused on analogy and the role it plays in the flexibility of human reasoning. At a practical level, I am trying to build an analogical reasoning
machine which can tackle realistic
problems in the domain of inter- or intra-national
conflict, answering such questions as, for example, "What are past
political situations that are most relevant to the situation in
Bosnia-Herzegovina?" or predicting specific consequences of, say, a US invasion of Iraq. The tangible outcome of this work will be a prototype of a tool that could be used by intelligence analysts. Along the way, I expect to develop and test theoretical models of human performance.
I hope that this work
will accomplish several objectives:
-
An advance in our ability to construct machines that reason
by analogy.
-
An advance in our understanding of the process of analogy in
humans.
-
Demonstration of the utility of interdisciplinary collaboration
between computer scientists and social
scientists for solving real-world social science problems.
Until I am further inspired to flesh
out this description of my work, allow me to engage in a brief
literature review. If
you are interested in analogy, this article may be of interest
to you:
If
you are interested in past applications of computers to
problems in the social sciences, this article may be of use:
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