Group Leaders
Professor Oliver Hauser
Oliver conducts research on inequality and cooperation in three main domains: organisations, society and the environment. He is a Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics and a UKRI Future Leaders at the University of Exeter. He is also a Faculty Affiliate the STAR Initiative at Harvard University.
At Exeter, Oliver is the interim Co-Director of the Institute for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence and a faculty affiliate of the Centre for Leadership. In addition, he serves as an expert on the UK Cabinet Office’s Evaluation and Trial Advice Panel, academic advisor to MoreThanNow, and academic affiliate of the Behavioural Insights Team (“Nudge Unit”).
Previously, Oliver taught and researched at the Harvard Business School, Harvard Kennedy School of Government and Harvard Extension School. He has held fellowships at the Alan Turing Institute, the Harvard Behavioral Insights Group and Harvard Women and Public Policy Program. He earned his Ph.D. in Biology from Harvard University and B.Sc. in Physics from the University of Innsbruck.
[Personal website | CV]
Dr Christian Hilbe
Christian is the leader of the Research Group Dynamics of Social Behavior at the Max Planck Institute.
Christian conducts research on classical and evolutionary game theory, and its applications in economics and biology. He is interested in how mathematics can be used to describe human and animal behavior in a wide range of different situations.
Christian has a PhD in mathematics from the University of Vienna and has had Post-Doc positions at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, at Harvard University, and at IST Austria.
[Personal website | CV]
PostDocs
Dr Cansin Arslan
Cansin received her doctoral degree from the University of Goettingen (Germany) in 2020. Prior to her doctoral work, she worked as a consultant for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and a field research associate for the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL).
She received her Master’s degree in Quantitative Economics at Paris School of Economics (France) and Bachelor’s degree in Economics at Yeditepe University (Turkey). She also earned a MicroMasters program credential in Data, Economics, and Development Policy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MITx).
Her research interests include behavioural economics, development economics, and policy evaluation.
Dr Julien Lie-Panis
Julien is a postdoctoral researcher at The Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Biology since November 2023. He obtained a PhD in Cognitive Sciences— and was advised by Jean-Baptiste André and Jean-Louis Dessalles. Before that, he studied (from most recent to oldest) Social Sciences, International Relations, Economics, and Mathematics, his original training, and original love, to which he eventually returned.
He works at the interface between game theory and social psychology. He often use insights from social psychology to design more realistic mathematical models, and sometimes tests the predictions of these models in the lab. In particular, he takes a cognitive approach to reputation and cooperation: What information do we need to infer that a partner is trustworthy? Based on what model of the social world can we make this inference? Under what conditions will people evolve to cooperate according to our model of the social world?
He enjoys working with scientists from across the social sciences and is also quite keen to answer questions from other young or aspiring scientists. Don’t hesitate to contact me!
Dr Ben Grodeck
Ben is currently a senior research fellow at The University of Exeter. He previously worked as a postdoctoral researcher at The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology (Dynamics of Social Behaviour Group).
He completed his PhD in Economics at Monash University under the supervision of Erte Xiao, Lata Gangadharan, and Philip Grossman.
His research interests lie in Experimental and Behavioural Economics, with a focus on the motivations of altruistic behaviour, cooperation, and how morality impacts decision making and market efficiency. He also has an interest in Experimental Philosophy.
Dr Nikoleta E. Glynatsi
Nikoleta is an applied mathematician, a research software developer and a postdoc at the research group Dynamics of Social Behavior.
She received her PhD from the Department of Mathematics at Cardiff University in 2020 with Dr Vincent Knight. Her thesis title was “Understanding responses to environments for the Prisoner’s Dilemma: A meta analysis, multidimensional optimisation and machine learning approach”.
Her primary research interest is mathematical modelling and its applications to biology, ecology and sociology.
She mainly programs in Python. She is a fellow of the Software Sustainability Institute, a core developer of the Axelrod-Python library and an advocate for open source.
Dr Kaleda Krebs Denton
Kaleda studies biological and cultural evolution using mathematical models. She is a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University in the lab of Marcus Feldman, where she also completed her Ph.D.
Her doctoral research focused on developing models of conformity, anti-conformity, and cooperation. In addition, her research interests include the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis and the study of major transitions at different biological scales, from cells to societies.
Currently, she is collaborating with Oliver Hauser and Christian Hilbe on the question of why the major transition to human societies happened only once; i.e., why is cumulative culture rare in nature?
PhD Students
Joel Lamb
Joel Lamb is a PhD student at the University of Exeter. His research is in behavioral economics. He uses both experimental and applied methods to study questions in policy relevant domains such as public health and environmental economics.
He graduated with a BSc and MRes in economics from the University of Exeter. In his MRes project he analysed the effect of exposure to vaccine misinformation on childhood vaccination decisions.
Xiaomin Wang
Xiaomin is a visiting PhD student majoring in applied mathematics at Beijing Normal University.
She is visiting the Research Group on Dynamics of Social Behavior. Her research focuses on cooperation in asymmetric games. She studies how heterogeneity in different dimensions of individuals affects cooperation through game theory and behavioral experiments.
Marta Couto
Marta is a PhD candidate at the Max Planck Institute. She is interested in understanding a bit of the complex world we live in. Currently, she is working in mathematical models of cooperation, specifically on the dynamics among heterogeneous individuals, resorting to the framework of Evolutionary Game Theory.
She is a physicist by training (BSc by University of Porto and MSc by Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon). In her MSc project, she studied the evolution of cooperation through sanctioning institutions on collective dilemmas with Dr Francisco C. Santos and Dr Jorge M. Pacheco.
Charlotte Rosetti
Charlotte is a PhD student at the Max Planck Institute. Her PhD is investigating human cooperative behaviour by running economic games while learning about linking experimental results with evolutionary models.
Charlotte is an experimentalist with a background in psychology and behavioural economics. She graduated with a Bachelor in Psychology from the University of Nottingham and a Master in Behavioural and Economic Science from the University of Warwick.
External Members
Dr. Yohsuke Murase
Yohsuke is a researcher at RIKEN Center for Computational Science, Japan. By training, he is a statistical/computational physicist and he received his Ph.D. at the University of Tokyo.
He is interested in the mathematical modeling of social behaviors, social networks, and complex systems. Especially his main focus these days is on game-theoretical problems, including direct and indirect reciprocity.He is interested in applying supercomputers to these problems.
He is also interested in developing software for scientific computing. OACIS is one of the software we are developing.