I am an Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan School of Information. My research focuses on the drivers of scientific innovation ("science of science"). I study how scientists communicate ideas to one another and the general public, and how these flows are shaped by status, culture, location, and technology. I also study how  scientific organizations evaluate and select research projects to invest into. Methodologically, I employ a variety of tools from the computational social science toolkit, especially field experiments and quantitative analysis of administrative data.

The evaluation/selection stream of work aims to identify how the evaluation processes organizations use may unintentionally favor particular ideas or innovators. Projects include

• Status bias in scientific peer review, and how to mitigate it

• Incentives for exploration vs. exploitation

• Benefits and costs of interdisciplinarity

• The role of social capital in scientific success

The communication stream of work explores how exposure to others’ ideas depends on reading practices, co-location, conferencing and other channels of communication, and identifies how status and culture make some scientists’ ideas more visible than others’. Projects include

• Gender and self-promotion in science

• Conferences as a mechanism to spread ideas

• Science and the media: What research is picked up by the media, and how is it covered?

Last but not least, I am interested in political polarization. I am studying how the physical places where individuals spend time provides (or doesn't) exposure to cross-partisan ideas. 

Previously, I was a Postdoc at the Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard (LISH). I received my PhD in Sociology from the University of Chicago, where I was a member of KnowledgeLab.

See my CV for papers and links.

Lab: DiscoveryLab, www.discolab.org

Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=DzSXZd9yYy8C

Advising: currently not accepting PhD students

Office: North Quad #3369, 105 S State St

Email: tepl @ umich . edu