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Meet the Social Sciences Faculty
- Assistant Professor of Economics
Yi Xin
Data are powerful. Understanding human behavior with real-world data provides important insights into policy design aimed at improving consumer welfare and market efficiency."
- Professor of Political Science
Alexander V. Hirsch
There are other institutions that are wonderful at teaching and wonderful at research. But at Caltech, it seems to me that to be wonderful at teaching means that you teach the students what the frontier of research is—that teaching and research are not different things."
- Bren Professor of Psychology, Neuroscience, and Biology
Ralph Adolphs
Caltech's small size really fosters interdisciplinary science. I exchange ideas with people from different fields when walking between my lab and my office, and I often run late to lunch at the Athenaeum because I catch up with so many students and faculty who I run into along the way."
- Professor of Economics; William H. Hurt Scholar
Kirby Nielsen
Experiments are starting to get incorporated into mainstream economics but are still a relatively new tool. Caltech has been a powerhouse in experimental economics from the beginning, and it's so exciting to join the tradition."
- Professor of Political Science
Michael Gibilisco
Here, political scientists are right next door to economists and right next door to neuroscientists. We often tackle similar problems, like collective decision making, but from very different approaches."
- Rea A. and Lela G. Axline Professor of Business Economics; Director, Ronald and Maxine Linde Institute of Economic and Management Sciences
Jean-Laurent Rosenthal
We have to restore people's understanding that science and engineering solve a lot of social problems, while also sensitizing scientists and engineers to the reality that their solutions must find traction within societal structures that decide what succeeds and what fails.
- Rea A. and Lela G. Axline Professor of Economics
Marina Agranov
There are good reasons to do experiments. Applying theories in the real world before testing them, and ruining someone’s real life, seems too high a cost."
- Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience; Allen V. C. Davis and Lenabelle Davis Leadership Chair, Caltech Brain Imaging Center; Director, Caltech Brain Imaging Center
Dean Mobbs
Caltech allows researchers to be risky. Risk is an important part of science. It's where discovery occurs."
- William D. Hacker Professor of Economics and Political Science, Emeritus
Charles R. Plott
Caltech’s continuing focus on the formalization, integration, and experimental testing of basic principles of economics and political science creates challenges, intellectual excitement, and an integrated body of science that continues to grow and find important applications that will span many decades."
- Rea A. and Lela G. Axline Professor of Business Economics and History, Emeritus
Philip T. Hoffman
Caltech is the one place where you really can do interdisciplinary work, whether you are a professor or a student. You never stop learning—or advancing the frontiers of knowledge."
