Carter's Research Page

About Me

I am currently a Chancellor's professor in the Departments of Sociology, Statistics, Computer Science, and EECS and a member of the Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Sciences and Calit2 at the University of California, Irvine. For those who are interested, an always mildly out of date copy of my vita is available here. (See also my faculty profile, which is usually much more out of date.)

I joined the Irvine faculty in 2002, after receiving my Ph.D. from the Department of Social and Decision Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University. I also hold an M.S. from Carnegie Mellon University, and a B.S. from Duke University. I currently serve as an associate editor for Journal of the American Statistical Association (Applications and Case Studies), an area editor for the journal Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, and serve on the editorial board of the Journal of Mathematical Sociology and the board of reviewing editors for Science. I have served as chair of the American Sociological Association's Section on Mathematical Sociology, council member of the ASA's Sections on Mathematical Sociology, Methodology, and Rationality and Society, and served on the board of directors of the International Network for Social Network Analysis. I hold paper awards from the ASA's Sections on Mathematical Sociology, Rationality and Society, and Aging and the Life Course, and am a recipient of the Leo A. Goodman Award from the ASA's Section on Methodology and the Linton C. Freeman Award and William Richards Awards from INSNA. I am also a Kavli Fellow, and a Fellow of the AAAS.

At UCI, I am a member of the Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Sciences, the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2), and the programs in Chemistry and Materials Physics (ChaMP) and Networked Systems. I am also a member of the UCI Center for Organizational Research, the Center for Machine Learning and Intelligent Systems, and the Center for Emergency Response Technology, and am the coordinator of the UCI Social Network Research Group. I am also the founding director of the UCI Center for Networks and Relational Analysis.

My Lab

The Networks, Computation, and Social Dynamics Lab works on a range of problems related to social structure, interaction, and decisions, computational and statistical methods, and molecular biophysics. We are housed in the Calit2 facility, and enjoy strong ties with our colleagues in sociology, engineering, statistics, computer science, and chemistry. Students interested in joining the lab should contact me for more information.

Research Summary

My research involves the development and application of mathematical, computational, and statistical techniques to theoretical and methodological problems within the areas of social and biophysical network analysis, mathematical sociology, quantitative methodology, molecular modeling/analysis, and human judgment and decision making. Currently, my work focuses on: the structure of spatially embedded large-scale interpersonal networks; theory and applications of discrete exponential family models for cross-sectional and dynamic relational data; the statistical mechanics of topological systems; Bayesian methods for network inference, model integration, and properties of biophysical systems; relational event models; machine learning techniques for analysis of high-dimensional trajectory data; and prediction of protein structure and function. I am also interested in social phenomena related to emergency situations, and am involved in research which seeks to combine social science and information technology to improve group and organizational responses to disasters and other adverse events. My teaching interests include social networks, the sociology of decision making, quantitative methodology, and computational methods.

Research Topics at a Glance

Network Visualizations from My Lab