Nicholas Christakis

Nicholas A. Christakis, MD, PhD, MPH, is a physician and social scientist. He is a professor of social and natural science at Yale University (holding the title of "Sterling Professor" - the highest academic rank at Yale), with appointments in the Departments of Sociology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Statistics and Data Science, Biomedical Engineering, and Medicine. He has previously conducted research and taught for many years at Harvard University and the University of Chicago. In 2009, Time magazine included him in its list of the 100 most influential people in the world. In 2009 and 2010, Foreign Policy magazine named him among the top 100 global thinkers. He worked as a hospital doctor in underserved communities in Chicago and Boston until 2011. Today, he spends most of his time at the Human Nature Lab, where his team explores a wide range of ideas, including: understanding the evolutionary, genetic, and physiological bases of friendship; encouraging villages in the developing world to adopt new public health practices (working in areas of Honduras, India, and Uganda); mapping social networks in various settings around the globe; organizing individuals into online groups to promote better behavior (such as increased cooperation and honesty); developing artificial intelligence that assists people in addressing collective action challenges; investigating social interactions in the human microbiome, among others. When not working in the lab, he teaches at Yale University.