Joshua Epstein

Professor of Epidemiology

Professional overview

Joshua Epstein is Professor of Epidemiology in the NYU School of Global Public Health, and founding Director of the NYU Agent-Based Modeling Laboratory, with affiliated appointments at The Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, and the College of Arts & Sciences. Prior to joining NYU, he was Professor of Emergency Medicine at Johns Hopkins, and Director of the Center for Advanced Modeling in the Social, Behavior, and Health Sciences, with Joint appointments in Economics, Applied Mathematics, International Health, and Biostatistics. Before that, he was  Senior Fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution and Director of the Center on Social and Economic Dynamics. His research interest has been modeling complex social dynamics using mathematical and computational methods, notably the method of Agent-Based Modeling in which he is a recognized pioneer. For this transformative innovation, he was awarded the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award in 2008, an Honorary Doctorate of Science from Amherst College in 2010, and was elected to the Society of Sigma XI in 2018. He has applied this method to the study of infectious diseases (e.g., Ebola, pandemic influenza, and smallpox), vector-borne diseases (e.g., zika), urban disaster preparedness, contagious violence, the evolution of norms, economic dynamics, computational archaeology, and the emergence of social classes, among many other topics. His books include Nonlinear Dynamics, Mathematical Biology, and Social Science (Wiley 1997), Generative Social Science: Studies in Agent-Based Computational Modeling (Princeton, 2006), Agent_Zero: Toward Neurocognitive Foundations for Generative Social Science (Princeton, 2013), and with Robert Axtell, Growing Artificial Societies: Social Science from the Bottom Up (MIT, 1996). Dr. Epstein earned his BA from Amherst College and his Ph.D. from The Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Education

BA, Independent Scholar with Thesis in Political Economy, Amherst College, Amherst, MA

PhD, Political Science (Specialization: Security Studies, Communist Studies, and Economics), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA

Honors and awards

Honorary Doctorate of Science, Amherst College (2010)

Director’s Pioneer Award, National Institutes of Health (2008)

Rockefeller Foundation International Relations Fellowship (1984)

Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellowship (1983)

Ford Foundation Dual Expertise Fellowship in Soviet/East European Area Studies and International Security/Arms Control (1981)

Institute for the Study of World Politics Fellowship (1981)

Areas of research and study

Agent-Based Modeling

Applied Economics

Cost Analysis

Disaster Health

Epidemiology

Health Economics

Infectious Diseases

Mathematical and Computational Modeling

Modeling Social and Behavioral Dynamics

New York Department of Health and Mental Hygiene

Public Health Systems

Urban Health

Urban Informatics

Urban Science

Presentations

Agent Zero and Generative Social Science

Agent Zero and Integrative Economics

Publications

Publications

"Interiew with Joshua Epstein, conducted by Romain PLassard and Francesco Sergie. Oral Histories of Economics. OECONOMICA. The Sorbonne, Paris

Agent_Zero and Evolutionary Economics

Simulating the Simultaneous Impact of Medication for Opioid Use Disorder and Naloxone on Opioid Overdose Death in Eight New York Counties

Agent_Zero InternationalConference onEvolutionaryEconomicsInvitedLecturerPisa, Italy Nov 6,2023

Agent_Zero InternationalConference onEvolutionaryEconomicsInvitedLecturerPisa, Italy Nov 6,2023

Can Social Norms Explain Long-Term Trends in Alcohol Use? Insights from Inverse Generative Social Science

Civil Violence and EndogenousInequalityInstitut desSystemesComplexes,InvitedLecturerParis October2023

Generating Mixed Patterns of Residential Segregation : An Evolutionary Approach

Generative Social Science andAgent_Zero: A Formal Alternative tothe Rational ActorComplexityScience HubViennaInvitedLecturerVienna,AustriaNov 3,2023

Inverse Generative Social Science : Backward to the Future

Special Section on "Inverse Generative Social Science" : Guest Editors’ Statement

Toward Cognitive Epidemiology:An Agent_Zero ApproachEHESS(Ecole desHaute Etudesan SciencesSociales).School forAdvancedStudies in theSocialSciences,InvitedLecturerParis October202310Paris.Institute desSystemesComplex,Paris

“Agent-Based Modeling in PublicHealth: From Playground to Planet”may be viewed herehttps://www.inet.ox.ac.uk/events/agent-based-modelling-in-public-health-from-playground-to-planet-professor-joshua-m-epstein-new-york-university/The MartinSchool, Oxfor

At the Boundary of Law and Software : Toward Regulatory Design with Agent-Based Modeling

Privacy and contact tracing efficacy

A review and agenda for integrated disease models including social and behavioural factors

Triple contagion : A two-fears epidemic model

Data analysis and modeling pipelines for controlled networked social science experiments

Networked experiments and modeling for producing collective identity in a group of human subjects using an iterative abduction framework

The Normative Underpinnings of Population-Level Alcohol Use : An Individual-Level Simulation Model

Mechanistic and data-driven agent-based models to explain human behavior in online networked group anagram games

Panel discussion : Moving social-behavioral modeling forward

Pipelines and their compositions for modeling and analysis of controlled online networked social science experiments

Toward inverse generative social science using multi-objective genetic programming

Generative modeling of human behavior and social interactions using abductive analysis