Dr. Elisa Bienenstock: Chief Human Sciences Officer

Dr. Elisa Jayne Bienenstock is NSI Chief Human Sciences Officer. In this capacity, Dr. Bienenstock is currently spearheading a number of DoD and Intelligence Community projects focused on developing and applying social network and decision-theoretic leadership models for anticipatory analysis and early indications and warning. Dr. Bienenstock received her PhD from UCLA in Mathematical Sociology. Her substantive area of specialization within sociology is social psychology, with emphasis on emergent properties of exchange. Her focus is applying formal models, such as social networks and game theory, to understand the relationships between elements of human interaction such as power, status, inequality, conflict, cooperation, coalition formation, reciprocity, and reputation. She currently holds a position as an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University where she teaches Social Network Analysis for the Culture, Communication and Technology Program. Prior to joining National Security Innovations Inc., (NSI) Dr. Bienenstock was an Associate at Booz Allen Hamilton where she applied computational and quantitative social science methods and formal models such as social networks and game theory to national security issues. Prior to that, Dr. Bienenstock held positions in the sociology departments at the University of California, Irvine (2001-2003), Stanford University (1996-2001) and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1994-1996).