The Science and Humanity Lab

Welcome to the Science and Humanity Lab at the Vermont Complex Systems Institute. We are a group of mathematicians and data scientists modeling the human side of science, in both senses of the word:

1. we build models to understand science as a complex social system, and
2. we model by example how scientists can engage fiercely and objectively on pressing humanitarian questions.

News

• (Dec 2025) Co-organized two workshops in December at the Santa Fe Institute: (1) Towards a Data-Driven Science of Stories with Peter Dodds, Samsun Knight, and Juniper Lovato; and (2) Understanding the Historical Forces Driving Expansions of Human Rights with David Wolpert.

• (Nov 2025) New paper in Nature Communications. We contribute a novel statistical method called agglomerative matching to understand the relationship between land rights and reforestation.

• (Sep 2025) Welcome Luc Cohen-Wanis to the lab! 🥳

• (Jun 2025) Sam and Avi present lab work at ICSSI in Copenhagen. Sam’s talk voted “Best Lightning Talk”!