Collaborations

Currently, I am working as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Social and Decision Analytics Division at the University of Virginia's Biocomplexity Institute and Initiative. At UVA, I am part of a multidisciplinary team that (1) examines the growth of open source software, (2) studies the effects of common knowledge on collective action, and (3) uses data science to inform housing and health policies for a county in northern Virginia. We use a range of techniques in computational social science, including predictive modeling, geospatial analysis, online experimentation, computational text analysis, web scraping, and network analysis.

During graduate school, Brandon collaborated with various research groups to diversify his approach to the social study of health research. In the first project, Brandon worked with Kristen Springer (Rutgers University) and Mary Himmelstein (Kent State University) as part of the Health Environment and Relational Ties (HEART) Laboratory in the Institute of Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research (IHHCPAR) at Rutgers University. They worked on a study that analyzed men's psychological and physiological reactivity to masculinity threats to understand the role that long-term stress plays in contributing to gender disparities in morbidity and mortality.

Brandon also served as a research assistant on a National Science Foundation (NSF) supported study with Rebecca Jordan-Young (Barnard College), Katrina Karkazis (Brooklyn College, Yale) and Liz Carlin (CUNY Graduate Center) that culminated in Beck and Katrina's book Testosterone: The Unauthorized Biography.

In a third project, Brandon was as a research fellow on a William T. Grant Foundation-funded study named Evaluating Policymakers Information and Knowledge (EPIK) with Itzhak Yanovitsky (Rutgers) and Matthew Weber (University of Minnesota). In this project, he incorporated various aspects of social network analysis, including exponential random graph models, to analyze the use of research evidence in the context of federal policy-making on childhood obesity. While at Rutgers, I also worked as a fellow on a National Institute of Drug Abuse-funded project with Kathryn Greene (Rutgers) and Michael Hecht (Penn State, Real Prevention LLC) testing an interactive technology-based substance use intervention.