My research interests include network science and gender and scientific work. Specifically, my main interests lie in various dynamics on networks including epidemic dynamics and evolutionary dynamics and gender imbalance in academia. My work has drawn on a variety of mathematical areas including stochastic processes, probability theory, graph theory, and social and behavioral sciences. The goal of my research is to enrich our understanding of contagion processes, evolutionary dynamics, and other mechanisms of cooperation in social networks.

My research focuses on the topics of gender and work, scientific careers and science-based organizations, science policy, networks and social structure.  I use quantitative and network methodologies to address how gender informs careers, existing theories of collaboration, and knowledge flows.

My ongoing research in these areas addresses gender disparities in research productivity – in both patenting and publishing - across academic and industrial sectors, gender and parenthood dynamics among science professionals, and gendered evaluation and decision-making in scientific and technical contexts.  Another line of research focuses on formal organizations, regional dynamics, and the science economy. 

My research investigates the ecology and evolution of cooperation among species, or mutualism. Mutualisms are extremely common in nature; many plants, animals, and microbes depend on other species to get resources, defend themselves, find mates, or disperse. These interactions are a growing area of research in ecology and evolution. Molecular techniques are revealing the diversity and importance of many cryptic mutualists, especially fungi and bacteria, and more research is being done in the tropics, where for unknown reasons mutualisms are particularly widespread. The primary goal of my research is to improve our understanding of the ecological and evolutionary dynamics of mutualistic populations. My current work focuses on the following questions:

• What mechanisms promote mutualism and prevent cheating?

• How does partner diversity in mutualisms shape the ecological and evolutionary dynamics of populations?

• How do mutualisms vary over geographic landscapes?

• What are the community-level consequences of mutualisms?