The Team
BJ Fogg | The Visionary, Behavior Design Lab
BJ first studied the application of Persuasive Technology to peace in 2006, when he taught the first Peace Innovation class at Stanford. In 2008 he taught the class again, leading to the first Peace Innovation project, Peace Dot, launching in 2009. With BJ's continued advice and mentorship, the project led to the founding of Stanford Peace Innovation Lab in 2010.Trained as an experimental psychologist, Dr. B.J. Fogg directs research and design at the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab. That lab's mission is to create insight into how computing products--from websites to mobile phone software--can be designed to change peoples beliefs and behaviors. BJ is the author of "Persuasive Technology: Using Computers to Change What We Think and Do." Outside the university, BJ runs a startup company that creates compelling user experiences for everyday people. He holds seven patents for his innovations in user interface design.
Margarita Quihuis | Executive Director, Peace Innovation Lab
A behavior designer, social entrepreneur and mentor capitalist, Margarita Quihuis’s career has focused on innovation, technology incubation, access to capital and entrepreneurship. Her accomplishments include being the first director of Astia (formerly known as the Women’s Technology Cluster), a business incubator where her portfolio companies raised $67 million in venture funding, venture capitalist, Reuters Fellow at Stanford, and Director of RI Labs for Ricoh Innovations. She is currently a member of the research team at Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab, and co-directs the Stanford Peace Innovation Lab where she conducts research on innovation, game design thinking, persuasive technology & the potential of technology to change society for the better. Her projects have included the study of collaboration and citizen engagement to foster government innovation - Manor Labs, bottoms-up post-disaster response and recovery - Relief 2.0 and advisory roles in citizen psy-op efforts such as the the Israel Loves Iran and Romancing the Border social media campaigns. She is currently part of the working group for the Stanford/Naval Postgraduate School/US Army Governance Innovation for Security and Development research project.She is a recognized thought leader in the areas of innovation, emergent social behavior and technology and has been part of Deloitte’s On Social Roundtable and Aspen Institute’s Dialogue on Open Innovation and Dialogue on Diplomacy and Technology.In 2004, Women's eNews named her as one of their '21 Leaders for the 21st Century' and was one of WITI's Women to Watch in 2003. She was named 'One of The 100 Most Influential Latinos in Silicon Valley' and received the Maestro Award by Latino Leaders Magazine.
Mark Nelson | Director of Innovation, Peace Innovation Lab
Former relief-worker, investment banker, and social entrepreneur, Mark Nelson founded and co-directs Stanford Peace Innovation Lab, where he researches mass collaboration and mass interpersonal persuasion. Mark focuses on designing, catalyzing, incentivizing, and generating resources to scale up collective positive human behavior change. He has described a functional, quantitative definition of peace, in terms of technology-mediated engagement episode quantity and quality across social difference lines; he has identified innovative, automated ways to measure peace, both at the neighborhood and global level; and he has developed a formal structural description for Peace Data. He leads the Global OPEN Social Sensor Array project, and designs technology interventions to measurably increase positive, mutually beneficial engagement across conflict boundaries. Mark’s mission is to create an entire new, profitable industry, where positive peace is delivered as a service. Other projects include EPIC Global Challenge and Peace Markets. Mark is also a researcher and practitioner at Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab, and a member of Stanford’s Kozmetsky Global Collaboratory.
Saumitra Jha | Associate Professor of Political Economy, Stanford Graduate School of Business
Saumitra Jha is an Associate Professor of Political Economy at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, and, by courtesy, of Economics and of Political Science. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Center for Democracy, Development and Rule of Law, in the Freeman-Spogli Institute and at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.Saumitra holds a BA from Williams College, master’s degrees in economics and mathematics from the University of Cambridge, and a PhD in economics from Stanford University. Prior to joining the GSB, he was an Academy Scholar at Harvard University. He has been a Fellow of the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance and the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics at Princeton University and received the Michael Wallerstein Award for best published article in Political Economy from the American Political Science Association in 2014 for his research on ethnic tolerance. Saumitra has consulted on economic and political risk issues for the United Nations/ WTO and the World Bank.
Karen Guttieri | Security and Development Policy Lead, Peace Innovation Lab
Karen Guttieri is working on a project on design for influence and researching trust with colleagues at the Peace Innovation Lab. She is also part of the Global Open Social Sensor Array team. Karen has for many years researched dynamics of social transition processes including interim regimes, and topics related to stability operations such as "Governance, Innovation, and Information and Communications Technology for Civil-Military Interactions." Stability: International Journal of Security and Development 3(1):6, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/sta.dc. and Karen Guttieri, Melanne Civic and Volker Franke, eds., Understanding Complex Military Operations: A Case Study Approach (Routledge 2014). Her work is published in the domains of international security, military strategy and doctrine, international law, cognitive psychology, and organizational learning. Karen recently directed a research project on Governance Innovation for Security and Development that analyzed the current and emerging operational context for military support to governance, the nature of expertise and the type of experts needed when the military is called upon to support governance in fragile environments. She is completing a book manuscript on the American military's approach to civil affairs. The book maps the evolution of the stability operations paradigm over time, and military learning as new technologies and normative standards for treatment of civilians emerged. She is an award-winning teacher who has taught courses in international politics, stability operations, and political psychology. Karen was selected in 2014 to become an Honorary Member of the Civil Affairs Regiment.
Michael Lopez | Business Director, Peace Innovation Lab
An experienced media executive, content entrepreneur, social innovator and Silicon Valley native, Michael Lopez combined the areas of business, evolving media technologies and adaptive business models to create new businesses, sticky media strategies and self-sustaining ventures. He has founded and operated two successful companies, produced worldwide live and online events, managed several worldwide media distribution organizations and produced a wide range of compelling content. Mr. Lopez’s career began with Bank of America financing start-ups in Silicon Valley. After several years, he entered a 20+ year career in media/content managing high-profile properties/IP and content talent starting with CBS and continuing with HBO and Sony. He then created his first company, which developed content and adapted distribution to new and evolving technologies for major companies. This led to the founding of his second company which created content for digital technologies and online platforms and became the largest independent in its field. After a successful exit, Mr. Lopez became Director, Mobile Content at SanDisk. He then founded his consulting firm, Solid Ground US serving a range of technology and online businesses. His clients included Wikipedia, Creative Commons, Public Library of Science, Ricoh Innovation Labs among others. He is currently the Business Director of the Peace Innovation Lab at Stanford (PIL). In addition to these duties, he has worked on the PIL’s Trust course in the Stanford Design School, Coca-Cola, SALDEF engagement and White House Roundtable on Excellence in Education. He received his BA (International Relations) from Stanford and MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. In his academic career, he worked with Sen. Hubert Humphrey and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the Nuclear Test Threshold Treaty. He also worked in the Washington D.C. Office of Rep. Paul N. “Pete” McCloskey (R-Palo Alto). Mr. Lopez currently serves on the Stanford Business School Alumni Association Board of Directors and as President of Hispanic Net, a professional and business organization for Latino executives, entrepreneurs and thought leaders.
Chris Bennett | Game Designer in Residence, Peace Innovation Lab
Chris Bennett is an award-winning Game Designer who has combined creative ideas with social networking to reach millions of players with his credited games. Chris creates compelling engagement loops and massively increases monetization for mobile and social games.Chris has over 17 years of experience in the entertainment software industry and was instrumental in expanding hit brands like Diner Dash, which is one of the top-selling downloadable games of all time with over 1 billion downloads. Chris has talked about games and game design for broadcast coverage in media including NBC TV, NPR and the San Francisco Chronicle. He is called on by organizations such as Stanford and USAID for his game design expertise.
Allen S. Weiner | Director, Stanford Program in International and Comparative Law; Co-Director, Stanford Center on International Conflict and Negotiation
Allen S. Weiner, JD ’89, is an international legal scholar with expertise in such wide-ranging fields as international and national security law, the law of war, international conflict resolution and international criminal law (including transitional justice). His scholarship focuses on international law and the response to the contemporary security threats of international terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and situations of widespread humanitarian atrocities. He also explores the relationship between international and domestic law in the context of asymmetric armed conflicts between the United States and nonstate groups and the response to terrorism. In the realm of international conflict resolution, his highly multidisciplinary work analyzes the barriers to resolving violent political conflicts, with a particular focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Weiner’s scholarship is deeply informed by experience; he practiced international law in the U.S. Department of State for more than a decade advising government policymakers, negotiating international agreements and representing the United States in litigation before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the International Court of Justice and the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal.Senior Lecturer Weiner is director of the Stanford Program in International and Comparative Law and co-director of the Stanford Center on International Conflict and Negotiation. Before joining the Stanford Law School faculty in 2003, Weiner served as legal counselor to the U.S. Embassy in The Hague and attorney adviser in the Office of the Legal Adviser of the U.S. Department of State. He was a law clerk to Judge John Steadman of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.
David Ngo | Behavior Designer in Residence, Peace Innovation Lab
Former member of the Persuasive Tech Lab, DavidNgo designed, created, and became the world’s first Behavior Design graduate from Stanford University. David’s ultimate mission is to help raise human consciousness IN tech and THROUGH tech. IN Tech means through the team, their process, and company culture. Through his consulting firm, Behavior Delta, David helped teams, facing product engagement challenges, apply BJ Fogg’s Behavior Design system effectively and ethically. Such teams include UNICEF Ventures, American Specialty Health, Pearson, and Spotify. THROUGH tech means creating measurable and profitable technologies that helps end-consumers live healthier and happier lives, that helps the greater community, and that helps advance peace in the world -- all at the same time. David expert focus at the Peace Innovation Lab is to systematize this Triple-Win solution.
David serves as a Behavior Design specialist/mentor to the Unreasonable Group and Uncharted that focus on denting the world’s biggest challenges. BJ Fogg and DavidNgo are co-authors of the (new, unpublished) 7-Part Expert Guide Series on How to do Behavior Design. BJ says “David is the #1 resource on Snaptesting (Behavior Design Method #7)”
Collaborators
Ryan Mayfield | Entrepreneur in Residence, LiveSafe Strategy
Ryan is the Director of Strategy & Vision at LiveSafe, enabling individuals to look out for their communities and build resilience with crowdsourced risk. He cares about: user analysis, core value propositions, misinformation, and international security. Previously, Ryan developed models for political risk and impact investing with a data science startup, and helped build the Hacking for Defense platform at BMNT Partners to solve national security problems at speed. He was inspired to rethink approaches to safety and security through research with the Empirical Studies of Conflict (ESOC) Project and the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), where he studied how insurgencies use minimum viable products and lean iteration to stay ahead of government forces. A graduate of Stanford University (Political Science & International Security), Ryan is originally from Vancouver, WA and now lives in East Palo Alto, CA with his wife, Aly.
Michael R. Hanneken | Sr. Fellow, Peace Innovation Lab
At the Peace Innovation Lab since 2016, Michael Hanneken has focused on collaborations between the private sector, government and non-government organizations. He was a battalion commander and former member of the joint staff at US Special Operations Command. At the Global Project Center, Michael developed a flexible framework to assist leaders in navigating international policy dilemmas in conflict-affect economies. He has been a reoccurring speaker at the MORS Emerging Technique Forum in Washington DC and at the Naval Postgraduate School on bridging qualitative and quantitative research methodologies.
He holds a PhD in engineering from Stanford University, completed postgraduate studies in commercial development from Harvard University, and is a former president of the Certified Commercial Investment Members, San Francisco chapter. Prior to coming to Stanford, Michael founded an advisory firm that supports executives and boards on prominent, multibillion-dollar, capital projects for public authorities CalPERS and CaHSRA, and private corporations such as Plantronics and L3 Communications.
Saurabh Mishra | Fellow, Peace Innovation Lab, Researcher AI Index Program Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence
Saurabh Mishra is a researcher and the manager of the AI Index Program at Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI). The AI Index grounds the public narrative on AI using a data-driven approach.His research is at the intersection of AI, economics, and decision-making. He is leading pioneering projects using AI for reliable forecasting of international capital markets to inform trading strategies and risk management to aid executive decision-making for private and public investment. His current research interests include cognition and psychology of how executives interact with AI systems to make decisions and reach sustainable outcomes.Before joining Stanford, Mishra served as an economist at the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and International Finance Corporation (IFC). Mishra has consulted for diverse international institutions including Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), World Trade Organization (WTO), and advises startups and funds.Among his contributions, he pioneered research on the role of hi-tech service sector in economic diversification, structural transformation economic growth and development. His research has been cited by several leading media including The Financial Times, The Economist, Bloomberg, Live Mint.He holds a BA in Economics, MS in Applied Economics and Finance from the University of California Santa Cruz, and PhD in Reliability Engineering from the University of Maryland College Park.
Ted Wallach | Visiting Scholar
Ted Wallach cut his teeth under Martin Scorsese. Directing and producing for over a decade in Bollywood, Hollywood, the Middle East, and Europe, his last film, Misdirection (narrated & produced by Common; on iTunes) in which kids escape the ghetto by becoming magicians, led to his creating a performance of a Blood-turned-magician for Google’s Peace Summit, where eighty “formers” (Neo-Nazis, gang members, terrorists) met to end the radicalization of youth.
As the original Creative Director of WeWork, Ted created campaigns from ending oil subsidies in America to building wells in Africa with Charity Water. After four years at different marketing agencies in NYC, he created The AMEX Trifecta of Upward Mobility with the Small Business Saturday team.
He became CSO then CEO of TimeRepublik a global digital time bank and returned to THNK: School for Creative Leaders where he did his post-graduate work to serve as an expert in residence supporting fledgling ventures with digital alternative currency strategies.
Ted now has a clinical practice in which he coaches individuals using a combination of Taoism and Quantum Mechanics to support feeling management, overcoming obstacles and manifesting that which they are trying to build in their lives.
He has become especially interested in the effect masculinity has on both men and women and has started Quantum Warrior an online men’s circle with his partner Eric Shanks. Together they are launching a podcast about masculinity with the Peace Innovation Lab at Stanford where Ted is currently a visiting scholar.
Amy Robyn Krystosik, MPH, PhD | Post-Doctoral Scholar, Stanford School of Medicine
I am a post-doctoral scholar in the LaBeaud Laboratory at Stanford School of Medicine studying arboviral epidemiology. I am interested in community health, social justice, and spatial analysis. I have recently finished my PhD in public health epidemiology from Kent State University College of Public Health focusing on chikungunya, Zika, and dengue in Cali, Colombia. Previously I worked on vector control with attractive toxic sugar baiting experiments and dengue and Chagas’ disease surveillance and control. I also advocated human rights for the prevention of domestic violence and HIV. I studied international health and development at Tulane University School of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene and Biochemistry at John Carroll University.
Annie Gentes | Graduate School of Engineering Telecom ParisTech, Paris
Annie Gentes is a professor in information and communication sciences in Telecom ParisTech, a graduate school of engineering in Paris, and head of the co-design and media studies lab. Her research focuses on creative practices in art, design and engineering. She is involved in multiple projects on IT design for mobility, culture, learning, and games. She explores 3D interfaces and virtual intelligent agents as well as new network infrastructures (in particular distributed architectures) and augmented reality technologies.
Rosanna Guadagno | Social Psychologist, Researcher
Dr. Rosanna Guadagno is a Researcher with the Peace Innovation Lab at Stanford University. She received her Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Arizona State University and completed her postdoctoral work at the Research Center for Virtual Environments and Behavior at the University of California at Santa Barbara. She has previously been on the faculties of the University of Alabama and the University of Texas at Dallas, and has been visiting faculty at the University of California at Berkeley. Dr. Guadagno also previously served as a Program Director at the National Science Foundation managing three programs: Social Psychology; the Science of Learning Centers; and Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC). Her research interests focus on the confluence of three main areas: Social Influence and Persuasion, Mediated-Communication, and Gender Roles. Her work has been published in journals such as: Perspectives on Psychological Science, Psychological Inquiry, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Computers in Human Behavior, Media Psychology, CyberPsychology, Behavior, & Social Networking, and Sex Roles; covered in the press by: CBS News, The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, The Associated Press, ESPN, The New Scientist, MSNBC, and Alabama Public Radio. Dr. Guadagno is an expert blogger for Psychology Today, is on the editorial board for the journals Basic and Applied Social Psychology and Psychology of Popular Media Culture, and is the Editor of the International Journal of Interactive Communication Systems and Technologies. Her work is supported by the National Science Foundation.
Paul Iske | University Maastricht, Netherlands
Paul Iske is professor at the School of Business and Economics, University Maastricht, Netherlands, focusing on Open Innovation and Business Venturing. Special topic: Combinatoric Innovation (Innovation by Combination). He is on the Board of the Network of Social Innovation.Paul founded the ‘Institute of Brilliant Failures’, with the mission to highlight the importance of experimentation to achieve paradigm shifts and breakthrough innovation. Furthermore, Paul is founder and president of the Institute for Serious Optimism (www.iiso.eu), aiming to establish the relationship between positive energy on the one hand and impact (business, social, sport, education, etc.) on the other.Paul Iske is one of the founding partners of the Institute for Next Generation Value Creation, that aims to discover new ways for a sustainable future, focusing on South Korea. He is also co-founder and Chairman of the Dutch-Norwegian Business Network.Paul acts as a board-room consultant on issues related to innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship. As ‘Consulting Challenger’ he invites his clients to make the extra step and to look beyond the obvious. He is a frequent speaker on international conferences and workshops focusing on Innovation, Creativity, Entrepreneurship and Knowledge Management.Paul started his career with a PhD in Theoretical Physics, followed by various positions at Shell, managing internal and external projects related to development of more sustainable energy production.Paul is a collaborative ambassador of the Peace Innovation Lab since 2015, sharing the mission and the approach, based applying ‘combinatoric innovation’ to make the world a better place for all of us!
Juan Manuel Menazzi | Instituto Tecnológico, Buenos Aires
Juan Manuel Menazzi is a consultant, entrepreneur and university teacher. He studied and worked mainly in economic development & social initiatives and focused on social projects design & execution for European Union, national & regional Goverments & private entities. Juan Manuel is enthusiast about tech & social interaction and exploring new tools for social projects and interventions.Juan Manuel leads the Entrepreneurship Center at Buenos Aires Institute of Technology (ITBA). Juan Manuel studied Philosophy, Social Sciences & Project Management in Buenos Aires, Milano and Barcelona and received DEA (Ph) with a study about Knowledge Sociology.
Timo Nyberg | Senior Research Fellow, Aalto University, Finland
Professor Dr. Timo Nyberg is the head of Software Business Lab and a Senior Research Fellow at Aalto University, Finland. He is also visiting professor at the Cloud Computing Center of Chinese Academy of Sciences and Dongguan University of Technology in China. At Stanford Peace Innovation Lab he collaborates to research and develop REDD, the Rapid Experimentation and Deal Design method, applying peace innovation insights for increasing positive engagement within and between businesses. In this context he is helping to develop models to visualize, measure, and optimize innovation best-practices.Timo has a research history extending from automation and control systems to information and communication technology, innovation, virtual reality, and dynamic value networks. His life-long interest has been in intellectual property rights and inventions. Timo was Head of the Research School, and founder of several corporate PhD programs at Tampere University of Technology in Finland. He is a long-time member of the Finnish Automation Society and has published over 100 scientific writings and articles and several books together with his colleagues. He has over 30 patents. He has received national and international awards for his innovation work.
Göte Nyman | University of Helsinki, Finland
Dr. Göte Nyman is a professor of psychology at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Since 2010 when working with the PIL/EPIC project he has advised Stanford Peace Innovation Lab on a broad research agenda, and helped develop models for measuring and promoting peace and non-violence, with a particular focus on opportunity perception and networking. He is the member of the Finnish Pattern Recognition Society (Hatutus), Finnish Consortium of Artificial Intelligence Society, and Rauhankone (“Peace engine”, founded by professor Timo Honkela). Göte’s research history extends from basic research to human technology, brain, gaming, innovation, psychology of the virtual, and organizational change. His life-long interest has been human vision. Göte was the Dean, Head of Department and founder of the cognitive science program at UH and has published about 200 scientific writings and articles and four books together with his colleagues. He has received national and international awards for his work. At present, he works with e.g. Human-AI relationship topics and is involved in the design of a next-generation, human-centric communication platform. Göte’s blog “gotepoem” is athttp://gotepoem.wordpress.com/ where you can find more about his thoughts and ideas.
Alex Soojung-Kim Pang | Associate Fellow at Oxford University's Saïd Business School
Alex Soojung-Kim Pang is a futurist of science and technology. Alex has conducted a variety of forecast and prototyping exercises exploring the business and social implications of emerging technologies, the future of science, and emerging global innovation networks. His methodological research examines how futurists can use behavioral economics and social software to better understand and build responses to today's complex global challenges. In spring 2011 he was a visiting fellow at Microsoft Research Cambridge, where he developed a framework for contemplative computing, an approach to information technologies that promotes mindfulness and concentration in users. Alex holds a B.A. and Ph.D. in history and sociology of science from the University of Pennsylvania, and postdoctoral fellowships at Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of Empire and the Sun: Victorian Solar Eclipse Expeditions (Stanford University Press, 2002), and numerous articles in scholarly and popular publications.
Gabrielle Wong-Parodi | Carnegie Mellon University
Gabrielle Wong-Parodi is a behavioral scientist who uses the decision science approach to design, develop and evaluate human-centered interventions to improve community resilience and sustainability, in the face of environmental and health threats. She has applied this approach to multiple topics including indoor air quality, preterm birth, energy conservation, energy development, sea level rise, and resiliency. Policies, programs or tools (interventions) to promote effective responses to hazards often make faulty assumptions about human behavior. Decision science offers one method for developing interventions that are behaviorally realistic and respectful of the people for whom they serve. This approach involves analysis (what decisions do people face?), description (how do people deal with those decisions?), and intervention design, development, and evaluation (how can people be helped to make better decisions?).Gabrielle Wong-Parodi, PhD, is an Assistant Research Professor in the Department of Engineering and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Wong-Parodi is an affiliate at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the Peace and Innovation Lab at Stanford University, and is the social science research liaison for CMU at Skoll Global Threats. Dr. Wong-Parodi holds a B.A. in Psychology and a Ph.D. in Energy and Resources, both from UC Berkeley.
Piero Scaruffi | Cultural Historian
Piero Scaruffi graduated in Mathematics, did research in Theoretical Physics, worked on the Internet before it was called Internet, and managed an Artificial Intelligence Center before deciding that he was better at thinking than at doing. He now calls himself a cultural historian. He has lectured in three continents on Cognitive Science, History of Knowledge, and Innovation. He has written books on a variety of topics: rock and jazz music, consciousness, artificial intelligence, history of science, besides original poetry. Two of his books (“A History of Silicon Valley” and “Intelligence is not Artificial”) have been translated into Chinese. He has lectured extensively in China since 2015. He founded several interdisciplinary happenings in the Bay Area, including the Leonardo Art Science Evenings (LASERs) and the Life Art Science Tech (LAST) festival. His latest book, written directly in Chinese with Jinxia Niu, is titled "Humankind 2.0 - The Technologies of the Future". An avid traveler, Piero had visited more than 160 countries of the world as of 2016.
Patrick Tague | Assistant Research Professor, Carnegie Mellon University
Patrick Tague is an Assistant Research Professor and leader of the Wireless Network & System Security group at Carnegie Mellon University, holding appointments with CyLab, the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, the Information Networking Institute, and the Silicon Valley Campus. His research interests include wireless/mobile communications and networking; wireless/mobile security and privacy; robust and resilient networked systems; and analysis and sense-making of sensor network data. He received PhD and MS degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Washington as a member of the Network Security Lab and BS degrees in Mathematics and Computer Engineering from the University of Minnesota. Patrick received the Yang Research Award for outstanding graduate research in the UW Electrical Engineering Department, the Outstanding Graduate Research Award from the UW Center for Information Assurance and Cybersecurity, and the NSF CAREER award.
Dr. Lisa Schirch | Senior Research Fellow, Toda Peace Institute
Dr. Lisa Schirch is Senior Research Fellow for the Toda Peace Institute where she directs the Institute’s “Social Media and Peacebuilding” program to explore the impact of social media technology on conflict dynamics and its potential for improved social cohesion. Schirch is also a a Senior Fellow with the Alliance for Peacebuilding and Visiting Scholar at George Mason University’s School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution. A former Fulbright Fellow in East and West Africa, Schirch is the author of ten books and numerous peer-reviewed chapters and journal articles. In 2018, Schirch published an edited book on The Ecology of Violent Extremism which builds on her previous work to explore tech-assisted dialogue and coordination to improve state-society relationships and social cohesion. She holds a PhD in Conflict Analysis and Resolution from George Mason University and an Honours BA in Political Science and International Relations. In her teaching work as professor of peacebuilding at the graduate program at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University and dozens of other universities around the world, she uses scenario-based, interactive pedagogies to foster innovation, improvisation, and skill-building in negotiation and problem solving.