I am an Associate Professor of Practice in Behavioral & Decision Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania and a Visiting Professor at Stanford University. I'm also a fellow at both the Behavioral and Decision Sciences Program and the Center for Social Norms and Behavioral Dynamics at UPenn, a collaborator at the Behavior Change for Good Initiative (BCFG) at Wharton & a Network Fellow at CESifo. From 2022–2023, I was also part of the former White House Behavioral Science Team (now: OES) and worked on high-impact RCTs related to the opioid epidemic.

My research lies at the intersection of behavioral economics, sociology, and political psychology. I study how social norms emerge, how they are enforced or eroded, and how norm disagreement and polarization influence both what people view as acceptable and how it shapes their actions.

My recent work develops and applies measures of norm pluralism and perceived polarization, examining how polarization shapes social preferences and cooperation.

A second strand of my work examines institutions and large-scale social outcomes, including corruption, crime, terrorism, and migration, often combining experimental tools with applied empirical methods. My interest in migration is deeply personal—I emigrated from Moldova as a refugee following the collapse of the Soviet Union, and that experience continues to shape the questions I ask about identity, institutions, and social cohesion. My Google Scholar page provides a good overview.