Katherine Ognyanova

Katherine (Katya) Ognyanova is an associate professor at the School of Communication & Information, Rutgers University. Her research examines the effects of social influence on civic and political behavior, confidence in institutions, information evaluation, and public opinion formation.

Ognyanova’s methodological expertise is in computational social science, network science, and survey research. She is the director of the Rutgers Computational Social Science Lab. Her recent work examines 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 Ognyanova is one of the founders and a principal investigator for the COVID States Project and the Civic Health and Institutions Project, two large multi-university initiatives exploring public attitudes to politics and health.

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.