Katherine Ognyanova

Katherine Ognyanova (Katya) is a researcher and educator exploring the structure of social and political processes in a digital age. She is a professor at the School of Communication and Information, Rutgers University. Her research examines the effects of social influence and technology on civic and political behavior, confidence in institutions, information evaluation, and public opinion formation. Her methodological expertise is in computational social science, network science, and survey research. Recently, her work has examined the association of misinformation exposure with trust in science, media, and politics. She is also investigating public perceptions and trust in artificial intelligence (AI).

Katherine is the director of the Rutgers Computational Social Science Lab. She is one of the founders and a principal investigator for the Civic Health and Institutions Project and the COVID States Project, two large multi-university initiatives exploring public attitudes to politics and health. Ognyanova is also a PI of the National AI Opinion Monitor, an initiative tracking public perceptions, knowledge, and trust in artificial intelligence technologies.

Ognyanova’s research has been supported by the National Science Foundation and the Russell Sage Foundation. Her work has been covered in news outlets including New York Times, NPR, Politico, Washington Post, and WIRED, among others (see media coverage). Her papers have appeared in leading communication journals such as the Journal of Communication and Communication Research, as well as high-profile interdisciplinary journals such as Nature and PNAS. She is also a faculty affiliate at the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University, as well as a member of the Standing Committee on Advancing Science Communication at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Prior to joining Rutgers, Katherine was a postdoctoral research fellow in computational social science at the Lazer Lab, Northeastern University and IQSS, Harvard University. She received her Ph.D. from the Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism, University of Southern California.

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