David G. Rand

Rand grew up in Ithaca, New York, where his father is a professor at Cornell University. As a teenager he was in several rock bands,^[1] including solo project Robot Goes Here.

He earned his undergraduate degree from Cornell in computational biology in 2004, then worked for two years at Gene Network Sciences.^[1][2] He then went to Harvard, where he earned a PhD in systems biology in 2009. After 4 years of post-doctoral studies at Harvard, in 2013 Rand began an assistant professorship at Yale University in psychology, economics, management. In 2017 he was appointed a tenure-track associate professor in psychology at Yale. In 2018 he was promoted to associate professor with tenure at Yale, and then moved to MIT as a tenured associate professor, where he then became full professor. In 2025, he joined Cornell University as a professor of Information Science, Marketing, and Psychology.^[3]

In January 2012, Rand was named to Wired Magazine's Smart List 2012 as one of "50 people who will change the world".^[4]

Scientific

• Dreber, A; Rand, DG; Fudenberg, D; Nowak, MA (20 March 2008). "Winners don't punish". Nature. 452 (7185): 348–51. Bibcode:2008Natur.452..348D. doi:10.1038/nature06723. PMC 2292414. PMID 18354481.
• Rand, DG; Dreber, A; Ellingsen, T; Fudenberg, D; Nowak, MA (4 September 2009). "Positive interactions promote public cooperation". Science. 325 (5945): 1272–5. Bibcode:2009Sci...325.1272R. doi:10.1126/science.1177418. PMC 2875121. PMID 19729661.
• Rand, DG; Pfeiffer, T; Dreber, A; Sheketoff, RW; Wernerfelt, NC; Benkler, Y (14 April 2009). "Dynamic remodeling of in-group bias during the 2008 presidential election". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 106 (15): 6187–91. Bibcode:2009PNAS..106.6187R. doi:10.1073/pnas.0811552106. PMC 2664153. PMID 19332775.
• Beale, N; Rand, DG; Battey, H; Croxson, K; May, RM; Nowak, MA (2 August 2011). "Individual versus systemic risk and the Regulator's Dilemma". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 108 (31): 12647–52. Bibcode:2011PNAS..10812647B. doi:10.1073/pnas.1105882108. PMC 3150885. PMID 21768387.
• Rand, DG; Arbesman, S; Christakis, NA (29 November 2011). "Dynamic social networks promote cooperation in experiments with humans". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 108 (48): 19193–8. Bibcode:2011PNAS..10819193R. doi:10.1073/pnas.1108243108. PMC 3228461. PMID 22084103.
• Shenhav, A; Rand, DG; Greene, JD (August 2012). "Divine intuition: cognitive style influences belief in God". Journal of Experimental Psychology. General. 141 (3): 423–8. doi:10.1037/a0025391. PMID 21928924.
• Fudenberg, Drew; Rand, David G; Dreber, Anna (April 2012). "Slow to Anger and Fast to Forgive: Cooperation in an Uncertain World". American Economic Review. 102 (2): 720–749. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.362.1558. doi:10.1257/aer.102.2.720. S2CID 14247829. Author's manuscript at Harvard repository
• Rand, DG; Greene, JD; Nowak, MA (20 September 2012). "Spontaneous giving and calculated greed". Nature. 489 (7416): 427–30. Bibcode:2012Natur.489..427R. doi:10.1038/nature11467. PMID 22996558. S2CID 4326080.
• Rand, DG; Epstein, ZG (2014). "Risking your life without a second thought: intuitive decision-making and extreme altruism". PLOS ONE. 9 (10) e109687. Bibcode:2014PLoSO...9j9687R. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0109687. PMC 4198114. PMID 25333876.

Popular media

• Rand, David; Nowak, Martin (11 November 2009). "Comment: How reputation could save the Earth". New Scientist.
• Yoeli, Erez; Rand, David (28 August 2015). "Opinion: The Trick to Acting Heroically". The New York Times.