Achievement

Over the past year, former UW IPEM trainee Dan Grunspan have been involved in a very fruitful interdisciplinary research project with collaborators in the biology and education departments at the University of Washington. This research project involves using social network analysis in large undergraduate classrooms (lectures with over 700 students) to test theories regarding cultural transmission as well as learn more about how social structures form in undergraduate classrooms and how they hurt or hinder learning. This builds on two of Dan's projects when he was a trainee: one involved constructing an agent-based model to explore the evolution of cultural transmission, while the other applied social network analyses to citation networks. Dan is certain his current research, which will be a central part of his dissertation, would not exist if not for his experience in IPEM.