Summary

About

Overview

Among its initiatives, LCSSP brings policymakers and other stakeholders to campus for distinguished lectures, colloquia, discussion panels, and workshops. The Center also develops courses that cover issues in science policy and science ethics. These educational goals are complemented by research pursued within the Center and by funding research endeavors across Caltech that engage with the societal impact of scientific advances or that explore the regulatory landscapes of specific scientific domains. The LCSSP supports a broad engagement between science and policy with deliberate emphasis on research and communication areas in which the Caltech community can contribute experience and expertise.

As of 2024, the research areas the Center focuses on are climate change and sustainability, the ethics of artificial intelligence (AI), and bioethics. Each of these substantive areas is one where Caltech has existing research strengths, and in which researchers are already collaborating through research centers and programs such as the Resnick Sustainability Institute, the Ronald and Maxine Linde Center for Global Environmental Science, the Center for Social Information Sciences (CSIS), and the Merkin Institute for Translational Research. Through collaborations with these existing programs at Caltech, the LCSSP facilitates stronger connections between Caltech scientific research and the policymaking process. Any Caltech faculty or students who have research interest and projects in these areas are encouraged to contact the Center co-directors.

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Research

Projects

Source: Webiste

The Center is excited to support new research projects that are policy relevant. Caltech researchers with innovative ideas in new policy-relevant research should contact the co-directors for additional information.

As of 2024, the Center’s research activities focus on substantive areas where there is strong scientific interest at Caltech: climate change and sustainability, biotechnology and bioethics, and the ethics of artificial intelligence. In each substantive area, the Center collaborates with other Caltech research centers, in particular the Resnick Sustainability Institute, the Ronald and Maxine Linde Center for Global Environmental Science, the Center for Social Information Sciences (CSIS), and the Merkin Institute for Translational Research.

The LCSSP’s research efforts center around developing and sustaining new scientific studies at Caltech in these thematic areas that focus on each topic’s unique ethical implications, policy impacts, and scientific communication. The Center’s founding co-directors work closely with Center postdoctoral researchers, as well as Caltech faculty and students, to produce novel and unique research contributions in these areas. In addition, the Center organizes and hosts workshops and conferences that present these research products and help to better connect Caltech researchers and policymakers.

Here are some examples of policy-relevant publications by scholars affiliated with LCSSP:

• “Measuring the Interaction of Sociodemographic and Building Characteristics on Energy Efficiency and Environmental Impact in London Using Machine Learning” (2025) by Cuicheng Zhang, Cong Cao, Pengyu Zhang, R. Michael Alvarez, and Ramit Debnath, SSRN, preprint article.
• “Partisanship Overcomes Framing in Shaping Solar Geoengineering Perceptions:  Evidence from a Conjoint Experiment” (2025) by Beatrice Magistro, Ramit Debnath, Paul O. Wennberg, and R. Michael Alvarez, npj Climate Action.
• “Attitudes Toward Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Globalization: Common Microfoundations and Political Implications” (2025) by Beatrice Magistro, Sophie Borwein, R. Michael Alvarez, Bart Bonikowski, and Peter Loewen, American Journal of Political Science.
• “Appealing to Independents: Information on Negative Externalities Increases Support for Environmental Corrective Taxes” (2024) by Beatrice Magistro and R. Michael Alvarez, Environmental Politics.
• “Fast-ER: GPU-Accelerated Record Linkage in Python” (2024) by Jacob Morrier and R. Michael Alvarez, Data Analytics Colloquium.
• “American Views About Election Fraud in 2024” (2024) by Mitchell Linegar and R. Michael Alvarez, Frontiers in Political Science.
• “Trust in Scientists and Their Role in Society Across 68 Countries” (2024) by Viktoria Cologna, Niels G. Mede, Sebastian Berger, John Besley, Cameron Brick, Marina Joubert, Edward Maibach, Sabina Mihelj, Naomi Oreskes, Mike S. Schäfer, and Sander van der Linden, preprint under review.
• “Moral Equality and Reprogenetic Autonomy in the Genomic Era” (2024) by Ozan Gurcan, Politics and the Life Sciences, FirstView.
• “Prebunking Elections Rumors: Artificial Intelligence Assisted Interventions Increase Confidence in American Elections” (2024) by Mitchell Linegar, Betsy Sinclair, Sander van der Linden, and R. Michael Alvarez, arXiv.
• “The Cognitive Foundations of Conspiratorial Thinking” (2024) by Lisa Marieke Kluen, Caroline J. Charpentier, Jeffrey Cockburn, Tessa Rusch, Sneha R. Aenugu, Yimeng Li, Reza Tadayonnejad, R. Michael Alvarez, and John Philip O’Doherty, preprint undergoing peer review.
• “Persistence of Wildfire-Related School Disruptions” (2024) by Ransi Clark and R. Michael Alvarez, preprint undergoing peer review.
• “Q-Diffusion Leverages the Full Dimensionality of Gene Coexpression in Single-Cell Transcriptomics” (2024) by Myrl G. Marmarelis, Russell Littman, Francesca Battaglin, Donna Niedzwiecki, Alan Venook, Jose-Luis Ambite, Aram Galstyan, Heinz-Josef Lenz, and Greg Ver Steeg, Communications Biology.
• “Perceptions of Science, Science Communication, and Climate Change Attitudes in 67 Countries, The TISP Dataset” (2024) by Viktoria Cologna, …, R.M. Alvarez, R. Debnath, …, RA Zwann, preprint undergoing peer review.
• “Electoral Innovation and the Alaska System: Partisanship and Populism are Associated with Support for Top-4/Ranked-Choice Voting Rules” (2024) by J. Andrew Sinclair, R. Michael Alvarez, Betsy Sinclair, and Christian R. Grose, Political Research Quarterly.
• “Integration of Ten Years of Daily Weather, Traffic, and Air Pollution Data from Norway’s Six Largest Cities” (2024) by Cong Cao, Scientific Data.
• “Modeling Impacts of Traffic, Air Pollution, and Weather Conditions on Cardiopulmonary Disease Mortality” (2024) by Cong Cao, Jan Morten Dyrstad, and Colin P. Green, Scandinavian Journal of Public Health.
• “Rich Data Variables: Integration of Ten Years of Daily Weather, Traffic, and Air Pollution Data Across Six Largest Norwegian Cities” (2024) by Cong Cao, Science Data Bank.
• “Physics-Based Deep Learning Reveals Rising Heating Demand Heightens Air Pollution in Norwegian Cities” (2024) by Cong Cao, Ramit Debnath, and R. Michael Alvarez, arXiv.
• “How to Better Predict the Effect of Urban Traffic and Weather on Air Pollution? Norwegian Evidence from Machine Learning Approaches” (2024) by Cong Cao, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization.
• “The Common Microfoundations of Attitudes Toward Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Globalization” (2024) by Beatrice Magistro, Sophie Borwein, R. Michael Alvarez, Bart Bonikowski, and Peter J. Loewen, SSRN.
• “Evaluating the Quality of Answers in Political Q&A Sessions with Large Language Models” (2024) by R. Michael Alvarez and Jacob Morrier, arXiv.org.
• “Identifying American Climate Change Free Riders and Motivating Sustainable Behavior” (2024) by Ramit Debnath, Beatrice Magistro, Cecilia Abramson, Danny Ebanks, and R. Michael Alvarez, Scientific Reports.
• “Trust in Scientists and Their Role in Society Across 67 Countries” (2024) by Viktoria Cologna, Niels G. Mede, Sebastian Berger, John Besley, Cameron Brick, Marina Joubert, Edward Maibach, Sabina Mihelj, Naomi Oreskes, Mike S. Schäfer, and Dr. Sander van der Linden (Ramit Debnath and R. Michael Alvarez participated in this paper, relevant to their work on trust in science & science comms), preprint undergoing peer review.
• “Attitudes Toward Automation and the Demand for Policies Addressing Job Loss: The Effects of Information About Trade-Offs” (2024) by Beatrice Magistro, Peter Loewen, Bart Bonikowski, Sophie Borwein, and Blake Lee-Whiting, Political Science Research and Methods.
• “The Effect of Misinformation Intervention: Evidence from Trump’s Tweets and the 2020 Election” (2023) by Zhuofang Li, Jian Cao, Nicholas Adams-Cohen, and R. Michael Alvarez, Conference paper, Disinformation in Open Online Media, 5th Multidisciplinary International Symposium, MISDOOM 2023, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, November 21–22, 2023, Proceedings.
• “Do Fossil Fuel Firms Reframe Online Climate and Sustainability Communication? A Data-Driven Analysis” (2023) by Ramit Debnath, Danny Ebanks, Kamiar Mohaddes, Thomas Roulet, and R. Michael Alvarez, npj Climate Action.
• “Large Language Models and Political Science” (2023) by Mitchell Linegar, Rafal Kocielnik, and R. Michael Alvarez, Frontiers in Political Science.
• “Issue Responsiveness in Canadian Politics: Are Parties Responsive to the Public Salience of Climate Change in the Question Period?” (2023) by R. Michael Alvarez and Jacob Morrier, Political Research Quarterly.
• “Why Don’t Americans Trust University Researchers and Why It Matters for Climate Change” (2023) by R. Michael Alvarez, Ramit Debnath, Daniel Ebanks, PLOS Climate.
• “Generative AI and the Future of Elections” (2023) by R. Michael Alvarez, Frederick Eberhardt, and Mitchell Linegar.
• “Conspiracy Spillovers and Geoengineering” (2023) by Ramit Debnath, David M. Reiner, Benjamin K. Sovacool, Finn Müller-Hansen, Tim Repke, R. Michael Alvarez, and Shaun D. Fitzgerald, iScience.
• “COVID-Dynamic: A Large-Scale Longitudinal Study of Socioemotional and Behavioral Change Across the Pandemic” (2023) by Tessa Rusch, Yanting Han, Dehua Liang, Amber R. Hopkins, Caroline V. Lawrence, Uri Maoz, Lynn K. Paul, and Damian A. Stanley, Scientific Data.
• “Facilitating System-Level Behavioural Climate Action Using Computational Social Science” (2023) by Ramit Debnath, Sander van der Linden, R. Michael Alvarez, and Benjamin K. Sovacool, Nature Human Behavior.
• “Social Media Enables People-Centric Climate Action in the Hard-to-Decarbonise Building Sector” (2022) by Ramit Debnath, Ronita Bardhan, Darshil U. Shah, Kamiar Mohaddes, Michael H. Ramage, R. Michael Alvarez, and Benjamin K. Sovacool, Scientific Reports.
• “The Politics of Vaccine Hesitancy in the United States” (2021) by Jian Cao, Christina M. Ramirez, and R. Michael Alvarez, Social Science Quarterly.
• “How (Not) to Reproduce: Practical Considerations to Improve Research Transparency in Political Science” (2021) by R. Michael Alvarez and Simon Heuberger, PS: Political Science & Politics.
• “Dynamic Social Media Monitoring for Fast-Evolving Online Discussions” (2021) by Maya Srikanth, Anqi Liu, Nicholas Adams-Cohen, Jian Cao, R. Michael Alvarez, and Anima Anandkumar, KDD ’21: Proceedings of the 27th ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery & Data Mining.
• “Finding Social Media Trolls: Dynamic Keyword Selection Methods for Rapidly-Evolving Online Debates” (2019) by Anqi Liu, Maya Srikanth, Nicholas Adams-Cohen, R. Michael Alvarez, Anima Anandkumar, AI for Social Good workshop at NeurIPS.