About Damon Centola – NETWORK DYNAMICS GROUP

Contact Information
Annenberg School for Communication
3620 Walnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6220
Phone: (215) 898-7954
Fax: (215) 898-2024
Email:damon.centola@asc.upenn.edu

Elihu Katz Professor of Communication, Sociology and Engineering
Director, Network Dynamics Group
Senior Fellow, Penn LDI, Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics
Faculty, Warren Center for Networks and Data Science
Faculty, Master of Behavior and Decision Sciences Program
University of Pennsylvania

Curriculum Vitæ

Damon Centola is the Elihu Katz Professor of Communication, Sociology, and Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is Director of the Network Dynamics Group and Senior Fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics.

Damon’s research centers on social networks, collective intelligence, and behavior change. His work has received numerous scientific awards, including the Goodman Prize for Outstanding Contributions to Sociological Methodology in 2011; the James Coleman Award for Outstanding Research in Rationality and Society in 2017; and the Harrison White Award for Outstanding Scholarly Book in 2019. He was a developer of the NetLogo agent-based modeling environment and was awarded a U.S. Patent for inventing a method to promote diffusion in online networks. He is a member of the Sci Foo community, a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, and a 2026 Guggenheim Fellow.

Popular accounts of Damon’s work have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, TIME, The Atlantic, Scientific American, and CNN, among other outlets. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, Per Bak Capital Partners, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the James S. McDonnell Foundation, the Templeton Foundation, the Spencer Foundation and the Hewlett Foundation. Damon’s speaking and consulting clients include Amazon, Apple, Cigna, General Motors, Microsoft, Ben & Jerry’s, the U.S. Army, and the NBA, among others. He is a series editor for Princeton University Press and the author of How Behavior Spreads: The Science of Complex Contagions (PUP 2018) and Change: How to Make Big Things Happen (Little, Brown Spark 2021). His forthcoming book is Goodthink: The New Science of Collective Intelligence (MIT Press / Penguin Random House, October 2026).

SELECTED HONORS & AWARDS

2026 Guggenheim Fellow.
2025 Best Paper Award, Journal of Social Computing.
2019 Harrison White Outstanding Book Award, American Sociological Association.
2019 Top Paper Award in Health Communication, International Communication Association.
2018 Best Paper Award for “Bipartisan Social Networks Reduce Political Bias in the Interpretation of Climate Trends.” The International Conference on Computational Social Science, Northwestern University.
2017 James Coleman Award for Outstanding Article of the Rationality and Society Section of the American Sociological Association
2016 Fellow, Wharton Mack Institute
2014–15 Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University
2014–15 Fellow, Lenore Annenberg and Wallis Annenberg Endowment for Communication
2014 Awarded US Patent (#8713143) for inventing “A method of creating social networks designed to facilitate diffusion of desired behavior among groups of people.”
2012 Runner-up, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Young Leader Award, Recognizing Innovative Leadership in American Healthcare
2011 Goodman Award for Outstanding Contribution to Sociological Methodology, American Sociological Association
2011 Award for Best Publication in Mathematical Sociology, American Sociological Association
2010 MIT Faculty Award for Research in Computers and Communications
2009 Award for Best Publication in Mathematical Sociology, American Sociological Association
2006 Award for Best Publication in Mathematical Sociology, American Sociological Association

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Isch, Calvin and Damon Centola. 2026. Experimental Evidence That Social Learning in Structured Information-Sharing Networks Corrects Anchoring Bias. Journal of Social Computing.
Guilbeault, Douglas and Damon Centola. 2025. Structural Synchronization in the Classification of Controversial Content. Journal of Social Computing.
Ethan Goh, et al. 2025. ChatGPT Influence on Medical Decision-Making, Bias, and Equity: A Randomized Study of Clinicians Evaluating Clinical Vignettes. Nature Communications Medicine.
Centola, Damon et al. 2023. Experimental evidence for structured information-sharing networks reducing medical errors. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Constantino, et al. 2022. Scaling up change: A critical review and practical guide to harnessing social norms for climate action. Psychological science in the public interest.
Centola, Damon. 2022. The Network Science of Collective Intelligence. Trends in Cognitive Sciences.
Centola, Damon et al. 2021. The Reduction of Race and Gender Bias in Clinical Treatment Recommendations Using Clinician Peer Networks in an Experimental Setting. Nature Communications.
Guilbeault, Douglas and Centola, Damon. 2021. Topological measures for identifying and predicting the spread of a complex contagion. Nature Communications.
Guilbeault, Douglas, et al. 2021. Experimental evidence for scale-induced convergence across populations. Nature Communications.
Becker Joshua, et al. 2019. The Wisdom of Partisan Crowds. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Guilbeault Douglas, et al. 2018. Social learning and partisan bias in the interpretation of climate trends. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Centola Damon, et al. 2018. Experimental evidence for tipping points in social convention. Science. 360:1116-19.
Becker Joshua, et al. 2017. Learning is robust to noise in decentralized networks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 114:E9184.
Becker Joshua, et al. 2017. Network dynamics of social influence in the wisdom of crowds. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Zhang Jingwen, et al. 2016. Support or competition? How online social networks increase physical activity: A randomized controlled trial. Preventive Medicine Reports. (4) 453-458.
Centola, Damon. 2015. The Social Origins of Networks and Diffusion. American Journal of Sociology. 120 (5): 1295–1338.
Zhang Jingwen, et al. 2015. Efficacy and causal mechanism of an online social media intervention to increase physical activity: Results of a randomized controlled trial.Preventive Medicine Reports. (2) 651–657.
Centola, Damon and Andrea Baronchelli. 2015. The spontaneous emergence of conventions: An experimental study of cultural evolution. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Centola, Damon and Arnout van de Rijt. 2014. Choosing Your Network: Social Preferences in an Online Health Community.Social Science & Medicine.
Teyhen, D., et al. 2014. “Key Enablers to Facilitate Healthy Behavior Change.” JOSPT. (44) 378-387.
Centola, Damon. 2013. Social Media and the Science of Health Behavior. Circulation. (127) 2135-2144.
Centola, Damon. 2013. Homophily, Networks, and Critical Mass: Solving the Start-up Problem in Large Group Collective Action.Rationality and Society. (25) 3-40.
Centola, Damon. 2013. A Simple Model of Stability in Critical Mass Dynamics. Journal of Statistical Physics. 151 (1) 238-253
Centola, Damon. 2011. An Experimental Study of Homophily in the Adoption of Health Behavior. Science. 334:1269-72.
Centola, Damon. 2010. The Spread of Behavior in an Online Social Network Experiment. Science. 329:1194-7.

SELECTED PRESENTATIONS

Yale Department of Sociology Colloquium Series, New Haven, CT, November 2026
Coco’s at Colette, NYC, October 2026
LECAS, IAS, October 2026
Communications Network, San Diego, CA, October 2026
CHIBE Virtual Seminar Series, September 2026
MIT Lincoln Laboratory, June 2026
Boston Federal Reserve, February 2026
Case Western School of Medicine Distinguished Speaker Series, January 2026
(Keynote) International Conference on Social Computing, Shanghai, China, December 2025
UCSF PRISM Workshop, San Francisco, CA December 2025
Rita Allen Foundation, Princeton, NJ, October 2025
(Keynote) Texas Council for Developmental Disabilities, October 2025
(Keynote) Georgia State, Center for the Economic Analysis of Risk, August 2025
City of Philadelphia, Mayor’s Office of Education, Philadelphia, PA August 2025
Institute of Cognitive Sciences, University of Lyon, France, June 2025
Leiden University, Netherlands, June 2025
Public Lecture, Pakhuis de Zwijger (Center for Art and Activism), Amsterdam, June 2025
CMU, Pittsburgh, PA, April 2025
(Keynote) UVA, “Contagion and Democracy”, Charlotte, VA, April 2025
Penn Pop Center, Philadelphia, PA, April 2025
(Keynote) Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA, March 2025
Stanford Medical School Center for Clinical Excellence, Palo Alto, CA, February, 2025
(Keynote) Alliance for Continuing Medical Education, Orlando, FL, January, 2025
Langley Labs, Langley, VA, December 2024
(Keynote) SFI/DIMACS, Rutgers University, October 2024
(Keynote) Sitra, Finland, October 2024
(Keynote) Community for Rigor NINDS, Philadelphia, PA September 2024
Northwestern, SCISS, August 2024
M.I.T., GraphEx2024, July 2024
Aspen Institute, Spencer Foundation Convening, Washington, DC, May 2024
NYU Abu Dhabi, April 2024
Annenberg Networks Conference, USC, Los Angeles, March 2024
(Keynote) Samsung, Seoul, South Korea, January 2024
Nobel Symposium, Lund, Sweden, August 2023
Google, August 2023
Great Place To Work, June 2023
(Keynote) Workshop on the Frontiers of Network Science, NYU, May 2023
National Cancer Institute, May 2023
Interurban Clinicians Club, April 2023
Center for Norms and Behavioral Change, University of Pennsylvania, February 2023
Ontario Soil Network, Ontario, Canada, January 2023
National Health Service, London, UK, December 2022
Oslo Metropolitan University, Oslo, Norway, November 2022
Workshop on Digital Networks, Provence, France, November 2022
Boston College, Department of Psychology & Neuroscience, October 2022
(Keynote) Man Group Alternative Investing Symposium, Oxford, UK, September 2022
(Keynote) 17th Annual Social Simulation Conference, Milan, Italy, September 2022
Eramet Executive Series on Organizational Change, Paris, France, September 2022
(Keynote) Schusterman Family Philanthropies, Israel, June 2022
(Keynote) The Nature Conservancy, May 2022
(Keynote) NIH, Catalyzing Communities of Research Rigor, May 2022
(Keynote) Inter-American Development Bank, April 2022
Sandia National Labs, April 2022
Stanford, Graduate School of Business, April 2022
Penn Medicine, Family Medicine Residents Colloquium, April 2022
Stanford Medicine, Clinical Excellence Research Center, March 2022
Harvard Law School, March 2022
Arthur Murray Foundation, March 2022
(Keynote) GOED Exchange Annual Meeting, February 2022
Hong Kong Polytechnic, February 2022
Harvard, Shorenstein Center, January 2022
(Keynote) Stretch Conference, December 2021
(Keynote) KES Global Exchange Twitter Conference, December 2021
Institute of International Finance, November 2021
IU Medical School, Indiana Immunization Coalition, October 2021
(Keynote) Health Progress and Equity Network National Meeting, October 2021
Penn, Medical Communication Symposium, October 2021
DARPA Symposium, October 2021
(Keynote) Asia Forum on Enterprise for Society, September 2021
(Keynote) System Dynamics Conference, July 2021
RWJ Foundation, July 2021
(Keynote) KES Global Exchange, June 2021
Nudgestock, June 2021
Ottawa Writers Festival, June 2021
US Embassy New Delhi, June 2021
(Keynote) WLA Annual Meeting, May 2021
UNC Charlotte, Computer Science Department, May 2021
Moore Foundation, May 2021
Columbia Club of NYC, March 2021
Wharton Club of NYC, March 2021
Penn Club of NYC, March 2021
University of Toronto, March 2021
Moore Foundation, March 2021
Harvard Club NYC, March 2021
Harvard, GSE-LILA, February 2021
McGill University, November 2020
European Research Council, November 2020
Brown University, November 2020
University of Cambridge, July 2020
Cornell, Department of Natural Resources, April 2020
Annual Reviews, Shot of Science, April 2020
Penn, LDI Fellow Retreat, January 2020
Princeton, Woodrow Wilson School, October 2019
Northwestern, Kellogg School of Management, September 2019
(Keynote) Greater Philadelphia Economy League Annual Meeting, September 2019
Aspen Institute, Vaccine Science & Policy Group, September 2019
(Keynote) Climate Land Use Alliance Annual Meeting, September 2019
Northwestern, Kellogg School of Management, September 2019
Penn Sociology, September 2019
Yale Sociology, September 2019
Harvard Club of New York, May 2019
Princeton, Workshop on Vaccination, May 2019
University of Utrecht, International Meeting on Experimental and Behavioral Social Science Conference, May 2019
Carnegie Mellon, Complex Social Systems Seminar Series, February 2019
CUNY Graduate Center, January 2019
UCSF, PRISM Health Symposium, December 2018
Stanford, EE Computer Systems Colloquium, November 2018
Penn, Social and Behavioral Science Workshop, November 2018
Penn, Social Norms and Informal Institutions Lecture, November 2018
Penn, PennDemic 2018, October 2018
Microsoft Workplace Analytics Workshop, October 2018
Amazon Headquarters, Seattle, Washington, October 2018
The National Museum of Natural History, Behavioral Risk Modeling for Pandemic Prevention and Response Workshop, October 2018
Penn, CMU Roybal Center on Behavioral Economics and Health Annual Meeting, October 2018
Penn, Technology and Policy Seminar, October 2018
Penn, Workshop on Norms and Behavior Change, October 2018
NSF, Distinguished Lecture Series, September 2018
Penn Medicine, Neurosurgery Grand Rounds, September 2018
NCI Meeting on Misinformation and Social Media, August 2018
Princeton, Woodrow Wilson School, August 2018
Keynote: ICCS: Network Interventions for Social Good, Cambridge, Massachusetts, July 2018
Keynote: IC2S2, Kellogg School of Management, July 2018
Academy of Behavioral Medicine, June 2018
HB Sports and Entertainment STTAR Summit, June 2018
Keynote: American Heart Association, June 2018
IT Symposium, Penn, May 2018
Keynote: Washington University in St. Louis Medical School Symposium, Missouri, April 2018
Stanford, California, April 2018
Santa Fe Institute, New Mexico, April 2018
Columbia, Mailman School of Public Health, April 2018
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, Medicine, Washington, D.C., March 2018
Penn, Knowledge Teach-In, March 2018
UCSF, PRISM Conference, December 2017
NYU, Center for Data Science, December 2017
University of Chicago, Computational Social Science Workshop, November 2017
Penn – CMU, Roybal Center on Behavioral Economics and Health Annual Meeting, October 2017
cSCAN, Glasgow, Scotland, October 2017
Santa Fe Institute, New York, July 2017
Analytical Sociology Workshop, Stockholm, Sweden, June 2017
UC Davis, Re-computing Social Sciences Workshop, May 2017
Keynote: Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine, New Orleans, March 2017
UCLA, California’s Center for Population Research, February 2017
Harvard, GSE, February 2017
Drexel, Department of Psychology, January 2017
Penn, Behavioral Economics and Health Symposium, December 2016
UCSF, Center for Vulnerable Populations, December 2016
Penn, The Warren Center for Network and Data Sciences, November 2016
Keynote: American Heart Association Annual Innovation Forum, Chicago, November 2016
Keynote: Social Informatics, Seattle, November 2016
Penn- CMU, Roybal Center on Behavioral Economics Annual Meeting, October 2016
Penn, Psychology and Evolutionary Biology, October 2016
Ignite Talk, RWJF, New York City, October 2016
Princeton, Department of Sociology, October 2016
Yale, YINS Workshop, September 2016
Stanford, Department of Psychology, July 2016
Keynote: Norms, Actions and Games Conference, Toulous, June 2016
WZB Berlin Science Center, Berlin, June 2016
Sorbonne, Paris, June 2016
Institute for Advanced Study, Sweden, June 2016
Cornell, Department of Sociology, April 2016
Duke, Department of Communications, April 2016
Keynote: Center for Mathematical Sciences Annual Symposium, Auckland, NZ, February 2016
Keynote: AAAI & World Wide Web and Population Health (W3PHI), February 2016
Microsoft Research, Redmond, WA, January 2016
Penn, Language and Cultural Evolution Workshop, December 2015
Penn, Health Communication Speaker Series, December 2015
Penn, Perelman School of Medicine, December 2015
Penn, Elihu Katz Honorary Lecture, November 2015
Penn, Warren Center for Network and Data Sciences, October 2015
Colby, Sociology Seminar, October 2015
Rutgers, Center for Cognitive Science, September 2015
ICA Panel on Computational Social Science, Puerto Rico, May 2015
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems, Northwestern University, May 2015
Gould School of Law, University of Southern California, April 2015
Psychology Department, Stanford University, April 2015
Media X, Stanford University, March 2015
Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University, February 2015
Network Science Seminar, Northeastern University, February 2015
Keynote: Center for Mathematical Social Sciences Annual Symposium, Auckland, New Zealand, December 2014
Department of Sociology, Columbia University, November 2014
National Cancer Institute, Shady Grove, MD, November 2014
Department of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley, October 2014
Keynote: Bloomberg School of Public Health Symposium, Johns Hopkins University, October 2014
Symposium on Computational Social Science, Stanford University, August 2014
NSF Symposium on Knowledge Transfer, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, August 2014
Microsoft Research, New York City, June 2014
Complex Systems Scholars Symposium, James S. McDonnell Foundation, May 2014
Department of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania, April 2014
Institute for Advanced Computational Science, SUNY Stony Brook, April 2014
Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics, UCLA, January 2014
Simons Center for the Theory of Computing, Cal Berkeley, November 2013
U.S.-China Health Summit, Harvard School of Public Health, October 2013
Behavioral Ethics Seminar, Philosophy Department, University of Pennsylvania, October 2013
Decision Process Seminar, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, October 2013
NIH RAPIDD Workshop, Epidemiology and Networks, Princeton University, October 2013
Web-Based Social Science Forum, American Sociological Association, August 2013
Apple, Cupertino, CA, June 2013
Center for Vulnerable Populations, UCSF, May 2013
Scott & White Healthcare, Austin, TX, May 2013
Atlantic Causal Inference Conference, Harvard University, May 2013
U.S. Surgeon General’s Office: Program for Health Innovation, April 2013
Future ICT Conference, Media Lab, MIT February 2013
Plenary speaker, MIT Conference on Future of Health and Wellness, February 2013
School of Public Health, Yale University, January 2013
National Academy of Sciences, Kavli Frontiers of Science Symposium, December 2012