About me

I am a postdoctoral research fellow within the ConsNet project at the Department of Statistics and Quantitative Methods, University of Milano-Bicocca, and at the BehaveLab, University of Milan. ConsNet is an inter-university project that studies conspiracy beliefs, their social network determinants (both online and offline), and their impacts on public behavior concerning health-related issues. My research interests lie at the intersection of scientific modeling of political information processing and political behavior.

My dissertation investigates the impact of cognitive biases on information source credibility assessment and its social consequences, with a particular emphasis on information outlet choice and macro-level political belief distribution. Further, it relates the credibility learning mechanisms with the dissemination of disinformation across social networks and its impact on citizens’ political belief formation. Through a sophisticated combination of agent-based modeling and simulation techniques, I unravel the multifaceted interplay between cognitive biases, credibility assessments, social persuasion, and the spread of misleading information.

Before joining the ConsNet project, I earned my Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Pittsburgh in 2024. During my doctoral studies, I worked at the Pitt Disinformation Lab, which combats disinformation by strengthening social connections within the regional community. My research employs a variety of methods, including computational and behavioral modeling, controlled experiments, and computational tools such as text-as-data and machine learning.