J Matias
Assistant Professor at Cornell University
City of Ithaca, New York, United States
Summary
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Senior🎓
Top SchoolJ Matias is a Guatemalan-American assistant professor at Cornell University who leads the Citizens & Technology Lab, combining social psychology and computer science to study digital governance, algorithms, and behavior change in networks. With 14 years of experience across academia and industry—from the MIT Media Lab and Princeton to Microsoft Research—he designs large-scale citizen behavioral science projects that mobilize communities of millions to produce evidence for policy and public accountability. He co-founded and serves on the board of the Coalition for Independent Technology, reflecting his commitment to independent, community-centered technology research. His background spans hands-on engineering and product work (including early startups and tools for civic media) as well as deep scholarly training (PhD and MA from MIT), enabling him to translate rigorous research into practical interventions. A less obvious strength is his track record of building organizational infrastructure—recruiting teams, managing volunteers, and operationalizing tech strategy for mission-driven initiatives—which helps him scale participatory science beyond the lab.
14 years of coding experience
7 years of employment as a software developer
Doctor of Philosophy - PhD MIT Media Lab (Center for Civic Media), Doctor of Philosophy - PhD MIT Media Lab (Center for Civic Media) at Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyBA English, BA English at University of CambridgeBA English Computer Science, BA English Computer Science at Elizabethtown College
Github Skills (31)
reddit10
floppy9
governance8
dat-protocol7
tally6
command-line5
disk5
api5
peer-to-peer5
nodejs4
planning3
react3
turkish3
backend3
mls3
Programming languages (6)
Github contributions (5)
natematias/academicpages.github.io
Jul 2018 - Aug 2024
Github Pages template for academic personal websites, forked from mmistakes/minimal-mistakes
Contributions:68 pushes in 6 years 2 months
templategithub-pages-templatemmistakesmistakesjekyll
natematias/upworthy-archive
Apr 2020 - Aug 2021
Contributions:62 commits, 58 pushes in 1 year 4 months
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