I am a research psychologist and a behavioral statistician in Memorial Sloan Kettering’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics. I use behavioral statistics to study the psychology of decision-making and health behavioral change. My current research involves several topics: how patients make medical decisions, how to accurately measure patients’ quality of life, and how patients change behaviors that affect their health, for example quitting smoking. Recently, I have begun examining social network dynamics of smoking among young adult smokers. To answer research questions, I use the statistical computer programs R and WinBUGS to fit Item Response Theory and hierarchical linear modeling. I use the Python package NetworkX to carry out social network analysis.

I also teach behavioral statistics to PhD-level researchers. Some of my lecture notes can be found at http://www.psych.upenn.edu/~baron/rpsych/rpsych.html (with Jonathan Baron at University of Pennsylvania).

I am affiliated with the health behavior change and cancer risk reduction laboratory, whose members examine the psychological and behavioral factors at work in cancer prevention and early detection. I am also a member of various national scientific societies including the Society of Judgment and Decision Making and the Society for Medical Decision Making.