Paul Smaldino

Cognitive and Information Sciences
Quantitative and Systems Biology
University of California, Merced

Office: SSM 255B
Email: psmaldino@ucmerced.edu
Google Scholar
Bluesky

Who I am
I am a Professor of Cognitive & Information Sciences and faculty in the Quantitative and Systems Biology graduate program at UC Merced, where I am also affiliated with the Center for Analytic Political Engagement and the Center for Interdisciplinary Neuroscience. Extramurally, I am an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute.

What I do
I study how behaviors emerge and evolve in response to social, cultural, and ecological pressures, as well as how those pressures can themselves evolve. I also have broad interests related to cultural evolution, cooperation, and complex systems. Much of my work involves building and analyzing mathematical models and computer simulations. Some of my current projects involve the emergence of identity signaling strategies, the role of identity in social learning, socioecological influences on personality development, the role of diversity in innovation, the cultural evolution of analogies, and the population dynamics of scientific norms.

My textbook, Modeling Social Behavior: Mathematical and Agent-Based Models of Social Dynamics and Cultural Evolution, was published in Fall 2023 by Princeton University Press. 

If you poke around this site, you can learn some more things about me, check out my publications, and in general see the sorts of things we’ve come to expect from the personal websites of academics.