Katherine Ognyanova studies the structure of social and political processes in a changing information environment. She is a professor at the School of Communication and Information, Rutgers University. Her work 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 spans computational social science, network science, and survey research. In recent publications, she explores the association of misinformation exposure with trust in science, media, and politics. She also investigates public attitudes towards artificial intelligence (AI).
Ognyanova is the director of the Rutgers Computational Social Science Lab. She is a co-founder and principal investigator of the Civic Health and Institutions Project, a large multi-university initiative exploring public attitudes toward politics and health. Ognyanova also leads 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. Her papers have appeared in leading communication journals such as Communication Research and Journal of Communication, as well as high-profile interdisciplinary journals such as Nature and PNAS. She is also a member of the Standing Committee on Advancing Science Communication at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.