Elisa Bienenstock

Elisa Jayne Bienenstock is a college research professor at the Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions at Arizona State University. Bienenstock received her doctorate from University of California-Los Angeles in sociology in the area of mathematical sociology. Her substantive area of specialization within sociology is social psychology, with emphasis on emergent properties of exchange. Her focus is applying formal models, such as social networks and game theory, to understand the relationships among elements of human interaction such as power, status, inequality, conflict, cooperation, coalition formation, reciprocity, and reputation. In addition to serving as faculty at Georgetown University (2005-2014), the University of California, Irvine (2001-2003), Stanford University (1996-2001) and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1994-1996), Bienenstock served as an Army Research Office program manager and as a consultant (Booz Allen Hamilton (2003-2008) and NSI, Inc. (2008-2010) to the Department of Defense and Intelligence Community. In this capacity she spearheaded the development of multiple innovative approaches for applying social science and social network analysis methodologies, and using computational models, to address the needs of the military and intelligence community to understand, measure and study the human, social, culture and behavioral dimensions that impact national security.