Joe Bak-Coleman

Dr. Joe Bak-Coleman is an associate research scientist at the Craig Newmark Center for Journalism Ethics and Security at Columbia University. His research focuses on how the actions and interactions of group members give rise to broader patterns of collective action. He is particularly interested in understanding how communication technology alters collective decision-making and the spread of information. To ask these questions, he uses a combination of online experiments, observational data and mathematical modeling. Bak-Coleman earned his Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University. Prior to working on human collective behavior, he studied the behavior of animal groups, from zebra herds to fish schools.