Seth Frey

Seth Frey is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of California, Davis. His research focuses on computational social science, exploring governance institutions and complex human decision-making through computational methods, large datasets, and web-based experiments. He examines online communities as models of governance, with expertise in computational approaches to institutional design and strategic behavior analysis.

Education:

• Ph.D. in Cognitive Science and Informatics, Indiana University, 2013
• B.A. in Cognitive Science, UC Berkeley, 2004

Research Interests: Frey's work integrates data science, lab experiments, and computational modeling to study human organizations and communication. Key areas include governance technology, cognitive mechanisms of social outcomes, and institutional evolution. His projects span online games, sports, and open-source software communities, emphasizing topics like collective action, self-governance, and cooperative behavior.

Publications & Funding: His work appears in journals like PNAS and Nature Scientific Reports, and has been funded by NSF, NASA, and the Ford Foundation. He contributes to the Ostrom Workshop at Indiana University and directs the Computational Communication Lab at UC Davis.

Teaching: Frey teaches courses on data visualization, simulation methods, and online data analysis in the social sciences.