Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Sciences

The Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Sciences (IMBS) at UC Irvine is an inter-disciplinary Institute within the School of Social Sciences. It was founded by Duncan Luce in 1989, who served as director from then until 1999. Bill Batchelder served from 1999-2003. And since then, Don Saari has been the director. Luce is a mathematical psychologist and economist. Batchelder is a mathematical psychologist who has also done work in mathematical sociology and mathematical anthropology. Saari is a mathematician and economist. From this one gets a good flavor of what the Institute is about. The Institute has over 60 affiliated faculty and a small, but superb graduate program. (Disclaimer: Of which I am a member and Batchelder is my advisor.)

The five main stands of research of the members of the Institute (both faculty and grad students) are the following:

• Measurement Theory, Foundational Issues, and Scaling Models
• Statistical Modeling
• Cognitive; Economic; Anthropological/Sociological
  
• Individual Decision Making
• Perception and Psychophysics
• Vision; Psychophysics and Response time
• Social and economic phenomena
• Economics and Game Theory; Public Choice; Social Networks; Social Dynamics and Complexity
  

I am presently working in foundational issues and cognitive statistical modeling. Game Theory and Social Dynamics is an interest of mine, but I have not yet done any serious research in that area. I do hope to remedy that soon.

To say a few more words about the graduate program. While there are only six full-time students and one part-time student currently in the program, due to the unique nature of the program we have contact with students from various disciplines all of the time, e.g. this conference. This allows us to gain insight into the research of students outside are particular field of study. For example, I have learned a fair amount about research into vision due to my inter-action with fellow students- something that would never occur in a normal graduate setting. I should also re-iterate that IMBS has the greatest collection of mathematical behavioral scientists in the world and that in the program we have contact with all of these people.