Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability
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Daniel Verdi
Ph.D. Student in Education, admitted Autumn 2025
Research Assistant, Environmental Social SciencesBioMy research centers on science of science, human-centered AI, and social media, applying computational methods to explore how AI and scientific knowledge are evaluated, communicated, and governed. Methodologically, my main tools are large-scale data, natural language processing, and network science.
I’m currently interested in three interconnected themes: how AI and digital technologies are changing research practices; how science is developed and shared across scientific fields and regions; and how AI is impacting society more broadly.
Beyond conducting research, I am also passionate about designing tools and events to put science in conversation with communities and create opportunities for marginalized students to engage with research and technology. I’m especially curious about implementing ways to improve digital and AI literacies, as well as how to use AI and other technologies in informal education.
Before Stanford, I graduated from the University of Richmond as a Richmond Scholar, the institution's most prestigious merit scholarship. I have conducted research at universities such as Carnegie Mellon, USC, and University of Copenhagen, and interned at Amazon Alexa AI. I’m also proud to have co-founded one of Brazil's largest high school science fairs, the Brazilian Fair of Young Scientists (FBJC), which has engaged over 2,000 participants and received over 1M website visits. -
Madalina Vlasceanu
Assistant Professor of Environmental Social Sciences and, by courtesy, of Organizational Development at the Graduate School of Business
BioMadalina Vlasceanu is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Behavioral Sciences in the Department of Environmental Social Sciences at Stanford University’s Doerr School of Sustainability and the Director of the Climate Cognition Lab. Professor Vlasceanu is also a Faculty Fellow at the Stanford Center for Affective Science, the chair of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology at the United Nations, and a committee member of the Psychology Coalition at the United Nations, and the International Panel on the Information Environment. She obtained a PhD in Psychology and Neuroscience from Princeton University in 2021 and a BA in Psychology and Economics from the University of Rochester in 2016. Prior to Stanford, she was an Assistant Professor of Psychology at New York University. Her research focuses on the cognitive and social processes that give rise to emergent phenomena such as collective beliefs, collective decision-making, and collective action, with direct applications to climate policy. Guided by a theoretical framework of investigation, her research employs a large array of methods including behavioral laboratory experiments, social network analysis, field studies, randomized controlled trials, megastudies, and international many-lab collaborations, with the goal of understanding the processes underlying climate awareness and action at the individual, collective, and system level. Professor Vlasceanu's research is theoretically grounded and focused on applications for practice, incorporates an interdisciplinary perspective, and directly informs policies and practices relevant to climate mitigation and adaptation.