About

Chris Soria, a PhD candidate at UC Berkeley, Greater Good Science Fellow, and Wonderfest Science Envoy, investigates the impact of social networks on health outcomes, focusing on cognitive health and dementia in aging populations. Soria uses causal inference methods to examine how personal social networks affect cognitive aging and health disparities, developing dementia classification methods applicable across international settings. His work also explores mortality and disease inequalities among various groups, including political partisans, socially isolated individuals, and migrants, and studies how diversity within social networks can positively influence health outcomes. Additionally, working with Professor Claude Fischer, Soria is exploring the use of large language models to enhance survey data collection and augment the research process in social science.

Social Network Determinants of Health and Cognitive Aging

I’m focused on studying how our social connections influence our health and the aging of our brain. My main goal is to separate the impact of feeling lonely from the effect of being socially isolated. Additionally, I want to explore how strengthening these social connections can potentially slow down brain aging. I also aim to investigate the effects of various types of social interactions, like those with close contacts versus new ones, on cognitive health.

Internal US Migration

I’m currently assisting professor Claude Fischer on a project using data from the UC Berkeley Social Networks Study (UCNets) on a project aimed at gaining a better understanding of the causal predictors of internal US mobility.

Partisanship, Health, and Mortality

Our goal is to gain a better understanding on how political party affiliation impacts health behaviors, and how these differences contribute to the spread of disease. A collaboration with Audrey Dorlien, Ayesha Mahmud, and Dennis Feehan. We ask: How do estimates of prevalence and mortality change when we acknowledge that partisans , Democrats and Republicans, behave differently during a pandemic? How would the overall pandemic magnitude and timing change?

Inequalities in the Education System

A project aimed at understanding the biases in graduate school admissions that may be contributing to inequality. A massive undertaking, we use application data to 100+ graduate programs to uncover how public school applicants fare in relation to private school applicants. To gain further understanding, we analyze the decision making committee’s background to assess whether public school students have a better chance when the committee also comes from a public school background. A collaboration with Matthew Stenberg, Sara Quigley, Catherine Madsen, and Lisa Bedolla.

Utlizing Large Language Models for Assisting the Research Process

How Large Language Models (LLM’s) can help augment the research process.

For more info

please reach to me for any questions at chrissoria AT Berkeley DOT edu.