Nicholas A. Christakis

Biography

Nicholas A. Christakis, MD, PhD, MPH, is a social scientist and physician at Yale University who conducts research in the fields of network science, biosocial science, behavior genetics, public health, and epidemiology. His current work focuses on how human biology and health affect, and are affected by, social interactions and social networks. He directs the Human Nature Lab and is the co-director of the Yale Institute for Network Science. He is the Sterling Professor of Social and Natural Science at Yale University where he is appointed in the Departments of Sociology; Medicine; Data Science, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology; Biomedical Engineering; and the School of Management.

One body of work in his lab focuses on how health and health behavior in one person can influence analogous outcomes in a person’s social network – for instance via the spread of ideas, behaviors, or germs. This work involves the application of statistical and mathematical models to understand the dynamics of diverse phenomena in longitudinally evolving networks. A related body of work uses experiments to examine the spread of altruism, emotions, and health behaviors along network connections online and offline, including with large-scale field trials in the developing world directed at improving public health (e.g., in Honduras and India). His lab has also examined the genetic and evolutionary determinants of social network structure and cooperative behaviors. His most recent work has used artificial intelligence (AI) agents (“bots”) to affect social processes online and in person.

Dr. Christakis is the author of over 200 articles and several books. His influential 2009 book, “Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives,” documented how social networks affect our lives and was translated into twenty foreign languages. His 2019 book, “Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society,” was a New York Times bestseller and was translated into nearly 20 languages, including German, Greek, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. His most recent book, “Apollo’s Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live” (Little, Brown Spark, October 2020), provides an account of the origins and course of the COVID-19 pandemic and its likely end. The book was longlisted for the 2021 PEN America Literary Awards and will be translated into roughly ten languages, including Greek, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.

In 2009, Christakis was named by Time magazine to their annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world. In 2009 and in 2010, Foreign Policy magazine named him to their annual list of Top 100 Global Thinkers.

Dr. Christakis received his BS from Yale in 1984, his MD from Harvard Medical School and his MPH from the Harvard School of Public Health in 1989, and his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 1995. He was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2006; the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2010; and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2017.

Heralded for balancing bold, macro ideas with tangible takeaways, and for breaking down complex concepts with clarity, Christakis takes audiences on a journey to the forefront of innovation and understanding.

Nicholas A. Christakis is available for paid speaking engagements – including virtual and in-person keynote speeches, panel discussions, interactive workshops and advisory/consulting services – through the exclusive representation of Stern Speakers, a division of Stern Strategy Group^®.

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Biography

Nicholas A. Christakis, MD, PhD, MPH, is a social scientist and physician at Yale University who conducts research in the fields of network science, biosocial science, behavior genetics, public health, and epidemiology. His current work focuses on how human biology and health affect, and are affected by, social interactions and social networks. He directs the Human Nature Lab and is the co-director of the Yale Institute for Network Science. He is the Sterling Professor of Social and Natural Science at Yale University where he is appointed in the Departments of Sociology; Medicine; Data Science, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology; Biomedical Engineering; and the School of Management.

One body of work in his lab focuses on how health and health behavior in one person can influence analogous outcomes in a person’s social network – for instance via the spread of ideas, behaviors, or germs. This work involves the application of statistical and mathematical models to understand the dynamics of diverse phenomena in longitudinally evolving networks. A related body of work uses experiments to examine the spread of altruism, emotions, and health behaviors along network connections online and offline, including with large-scale field trials in the developing world directed at improving public health (e.g., in Honduras and India). His lab has also examined the genetic and evolutionary determinants of social network structure and cooperative behaviors. His most recent work has used artificial intelligence (AI) agents (“bots”) to affect social processes online and in person.

Dr. Christakis is the author of over 200 articles and several books. His influential 2009 book, “Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives,” documented how social networks affect our lives and was translated into twenty foreign languages. His 2019 book, “Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society,” was a New York Times bestseller and was translated into nearly 20 languages, including German, Greek, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. His most recent book, “Apollo’s Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live” (Little, Brown Spark, October 2020), provides an account of the origins and course of the COVID-19 pandemic and its likely end. The book was longlisted for the 2021 PEN America Literary Awards and will be translated into roughly ten languages, including Greek, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.

In 2009, Christakis was named by Time magazine to their annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world. In 2009 and in 2010, Foreign Policy magazine named him to their annual list of Top 100 Global Thinkers.

Dr. Christakis received his BS from Yale in 1984, his MD from Harvard Medical School and his MPH from the Harvard School of Public Health in 1989, and his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 1995. He was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2006; the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2010; and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2017.

Heralded for balancing bold, macro ideas with tangible takeaways, and for breaking down complex concepts with clarity, Christakis takes audiences on a journey to the forefront of innovation and understanding.

Nicholas A. Christakis is available for paid speaking engagements – including virtual and in-person keynote speeches, panel discussions, interactive workshops and advisory/consulting services – through the exclusive representation of Stern Speakers, a division of Stern Strategy Group^®.

Speech Topics

Apollo’s Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live

Unleashing new divisions in our society, as well as opportunities for cooperation, this 21st-century pandemic has upended our lives in ways that will test, but not vanquish, our already frayed collective culture. Drawing on momentous (yet dimly remembered) historical epidemics, contemporary analyses, and cutting-edge research from a range of scientific disciplines, Dr. Nicholas A. Christakis’ new book, “Apollo’s Arrow,” explores what it means to live in a time of plague — an experience that is paradoxically uncommon to the vast majority of humans who are alive, yet deeply fundamental to our species. “Apollo’s Arrow” offers a riveting account of the impact of the coronavirus pandemic as it swept through our society in 2020 and 2021, and of how the recovery will unfold in the coming years. Featuring new, provocative arguments and vivid examples – ranging from medicine, epidemiology, and data science to history, sociology, and genetics – this presentation offers a deeply informed account of the impact of the coronavirus pandemic and envisions what happens when the great force of a deadly germ meets the enduring reality of our evolved social nature.

Social AI: How Artificial Intelligence Agents Can Help and Hinder Human Performance

A key challenge of artificial intelligence (AI) in coming years will be not so much how to optimize human-machine interactions, but how to optimize human-human interactions with what Dr. Nicholas A. Christakis calls “hybrid systems” of humans and machines. Christakis has shown how the careful, yet simple, programming of AI agents can enhance the performance of human groups, making people within such groups better able to cooperate, coordinate, and share information, ultimately contributing to their superior performance. In this presentation, he takes audiences behind the scenes of his groundbreaking, cutting-edge work on how AI agents can affect human social processes and performance. Christakis decodes his latest findings on the interactions between humans and AI, and reveals what the disruptive introduction of AI in our work and lives could mean for the future of human social behavior.

Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society

The current climate of social upheaval and polarization can cause us to lose sight of the inherent goodness in people. But Nicholas A. Christakis’ research offers a more optimistic view. In this bold, innovative, and captivating talk, based on his bestselling 2019 book “Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society,” Dr. Christakis reveals how our evolution has positively shaped our societies and provided us with a suite of beneficial social features — including our capacity for cooperation, friendship, love and learning — that comprise our common humanity. Chock-full of fascinating research and anecdotes drawn from history, philosophy, anthropology, genetics, sociology, economics, epidemiology, statistics and more, Christakis guides audiences from South Pacific shipwrecks to rural African tribes, from ancient civilizations to modern-day online communities, to reveal our inescapable social blueprint for goodness. He infuses his remarks with tangible and inspiring takeaways on how to improve cooperation, innovation and performance.

Social Networks for Good

Human beings choose their friends, and often their neighbors and co-workers, and we inherit our relatives; and each person to whom we are connected does the same. In the end, we humans assemble ourselves into face-to-face social networks. Why do we do this? And how might a deep understanding of human social network structure and function be used to intervene in the world to make it better? By taking into account people’s structural embeddedness in social networks, and by understanding social influence, Nicholas A. Christakis says it is possible to intervene in social systems to enhance desirable population-level properties as diverse as health, wealth, cooperation, coordination and learning. Drawing from his research, he reveals three classes of interventions – involving both offline and online networks – that can bring about positive outcomes: (1) interventions that rewire the connections between people; (2) interventions that manipulate social contagion, facilitating the flow of desirable properties within groups (or decreasing the spread of undesirable properties like viruses or fake news); and (3) interventions that manipulate the position of people within network structures. He illustrates the variety of ways these interventions can be used to, for example, foster cooperation in networked groups online, facilitate the diffusion of innovation and coordination in groups, and change health behaviors in developing world villages. He will also focus on recent experiments with “hybrid systems” comprised of both humans and artificial intelligence (AI) agents interacting in small groups. His work offers organizations in every sector a dramatic opportunity to improve key areas of business from marketing, customer service, and health care delivery to innovation and team performance.

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Recommendations

“Nicholas was absolutely terrific. The room was at capacity – 3,000+ or so and everyone was engaged, enlightened, enriched and entertained by his talk. No one left the room. A grand slam and excellent opening for our Annual Meeting. Numerous compliments and great post-talk questions”

— Heart Rhythm Society

“Nicholas Christakis presented visionary ideas on how social networking can be utilized strategically to maximize business opportunities on many levels”

— Sysco

Praise for “Apollo’s Arrow”

“Seldom have we been gifted with a study of pandemic disease marked by such scope, wit, and erudition. Still rarer is one that appears while the rest of us scramble to make sense of a rapidly evolving crisis, one shaped by the very social forces that Nicholas Christakis has studied for decades. ‘Apollo’s Arrow’ is more than history’s first draft. It will live on as a journal of the plague years, certainly, and it inspires as it instructs. Definitive, engaging, and astonishing. A tour-de-force.”

―Paul Farmer, Professor, Harvard Medical School & Founder, Partners in Health

“The world is ravenous for deep and accurate information about the most important event in the 21st century. No one is deeper than Nicholas Christakis, who ticks every box of expertise: medical, epidemiological, social, psychological, economic, historical. This is the place to go to understand the phenomenon that has turned the world, and our lives, upside down. ‘Apollo’s Arrow’ is gripping, enlightening, and vitally important.”

― Steven Pinker, author of Enlightenment Now

“In this brilliant and timely book, scientist, scholar, physician, and writer Nicholas Christakis shines the light of history on our dark moment, and illuminates it as no one else can. Insightful, informative, and urgently necessary, ‘Apollo’s Arrow’ is this year’s must-must-read.”

― Daniel Gilbert, author of “Stumbling on Happiness”

“Rich in psychological, sociological, and epidemiological insights, only Nicholas Christakis could write a book this comprehensive and profound and even optimistic during our national calamity.”

― Amy Cuddy, author of “Presence”

“Wow, what a feat this is — a fully developed book of extraordinary insight and superb narrative structure that was somehow written in the midst of a live-action recording of events. The journalist in me marvels. The failures Nicholas Christakis captures are so enormously discouraging, infuriating, and tragic. I can only imagine how long this book will be read for reasons beyond the obvious. I burned right through it and highly recommend it.”

― Michael Koryta, author of “If She Wakes”

“‘Apollo’s Arrow’ shoots straight and true to explain the scientific and social aspects of the coronavirus pandemic. Christakis’s background in biology, medicine, epidemiology, and sociology is a powerful formula for understanding this complex subject. I’m tempted to say that the gods created Christakis to write this book at this time. It is wise, vivid, and engaging.”

― William D. Nordhaus, author of “The Climate Casino” & 2018 Nobel Laureate in Economics

“To capture the COVID-19 pandemic requires unusually broad and deep scholarship, and an ability to integrate the too-often siloed domains of science, medicine, epidemiology, sociology, psychology, politics, and history, among other fields. In ‘Apollo’s Arrow,’ Nicholas Christakis accomplishes this challenging task as few others could, with unusual clarity and an endless array of surprising insights; this book will no doubt become essential reading for a very wide audience. A tour-de-force.”

― Jeffrey Flier, MD, Former Dean of Harvard Medical School

“A useful contribution to this initial wave of COVID books, sensible and comprehensive, intelligent and well sourced.”

― David Quammen, New York Times Book Review

“An instant history of an event that is by no means over. Exceptional. Magisterial.”

― Niall Ferguson, Times Literary Supplement

“Gripping. An indelible portrait of a world transformed.”

― Hamilton Cain, Star-Tribune

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