Duncan Watts

Bringing a scientific point-of-view and discipline to many related topics that the web-enabled hold near and dear, Duncan is currently exploring the role that network structure plays in determining or constraining system behavior. While approaching research in a problem-driven, interdisciplinary manner—drawing on insights and methods from sociology, psychology, economics, physics and computer science, he has been exploring the potential of electronic communications data, such as email, as well as online communities and web-based experiments, to resolve some of the measurement difficulties associated with studying human interactions and social dynamics.

Currently the principal research scientist at Yahoo! Research, where he directs the Human Social Dynamics group, Watts is also professor of sociology at Columbia University and an external faculty member of the Santa Fe Institute.

His research on social networks and collective dynamics has appeared in a wide range of journals, from Nature, Science, and Physical Review Letters to the American Journal of Sociology. He is also the author of Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age (W.W. Norton, 2003) and Small Worlds: The Dynamics of Networks between Order and Randomness (Princeton University Press, 1999).