William Kennedy, PhD

Bill Kennedy is an Associate Professor (term) in the Department of Computational and Data Sciences in the College of Science at GMU. He is interested in integrating cognitive science and cognitive modeling of individual into computational social science up to the societal level. He builds cognitive and agent-based modeling (ABM) on topics such as integrated, long-term learning, the origins of conflict in East Africa, long-term migration due to climate change, impacts of social policy on stress felt by caregivers, and the immediate reactions of the population of a mega-city (New York) to a nuclear WMD (weapon of mass destruction). His newest project is modeling the social impacts of nuclear detonations on the performance of a society’s infrastructure sectors.

He received his PhD from Mason after careers in the Navy and the federal government related to submarines, nuclear power plant regulation, and energy policy. His post-doc at the Naval Research Laboratory in cognitive robotics change his focus from Artificial Intelligence to Cognitive Science. He is now a Co-Director of the Center and teaches courses in computational data science, computational social science, and knowledge mining.