Contact Information
M.I.T. Sloan School
E52-564
50 Memorial Drive
Cambridge, MA 02142
Tel: 617-258-8912
Fax: 617-253-2660
E-mail: dcentola@mit.edu

Support Staff
Name: Michelle Cole
Tel: 617-258-5583
E-mail: mmcole@mit.edu

Areas
Behavior and Policy Sciences (BPS)
Management Science (MS)

Groups

• Economic Sociology
• System Dynamics

I did my undergraduate and early graduate work in Philosophy. I worked on problems in phenomenology, the philosophy of science, the evolution of altruism, collective intentionality, and intensional logic. After spending a summer at the Santa Fe Institute Summer School on Complex Systems, I moved to Cornell University to combine the study of Sociology with IGERT training in Non-Linear Dynamics and Chaos. I received my Ph.D. in Sociology from Cornell University in 2006, and I am currently a faculty member in Economic Sociology and System Dynamics at M.I.T.

My research focuses on the diffusion of collective behavior, including 1) social movements, 2) cultural differentiation, and 3) social epidemiology. This research has won the 2006 and 2009 American Sociological Association Award for Outstanding Article in Mathematical Sociology. My work has been published in the American Journal of Sociology, Physica A, and the Journal of Conflict Resolution. Before coming to M.I.T., I was a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in Health Policy at Harvard University, and had been a visiting scholar at the Brookings Institution, the Santa Fe Institute, the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy, and the Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Studies.