Peter Krafft

Affiliation: UW Information School

UW Mentors:
Emma Spiro, Information School
Emily Fox, School of Computer Science & Engineering and Department of Statistics

Education History:

Ph.D. Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2017)
M.S. Computer Science, University of Massachusetts Amherst (2012)
B.S. Mathematics and Statistics, University of Massachusetts Amherst (2010)
A.A. Massasoit Community College (2007)

Research Goals:

Dr. Krafft is a computational social scientist interested in the successes and failures of collective intelligence, especially information aggregation and rumors on online platforms. The key mission of this research is to identify how groups of people can effectively learn about the world together, and to identify the vulnerabilities of these mechanisms.

Central to this endeavor is understanding how our knowledge is represented, sometimes refined, and sometimes distorted at the population level. Dr. Krafft’s work combines Bayesian cognitive modeling, tools from distributed computation, laboratory and field experiments, observational data analysis, and qualitative research. Dr. Krafft also has a variety of related interests, including public understanding of science, design of digital institutions, and research methods.