Mr Johannes Castner

About

I have recently been appointed as Senior Lecturer in Behavioural Sciences at Kingston Business School in the Department of Management and I am affiliated with the 'Behavioural Research Analytics In Neurotechnological Systems' (BRAINS) Lab. 

Having started my career at the research department of the Boston Federal Reserve bank and, after a masters in sustainable development joined eBay as a senior data scientist, my research and teaching are grounded in my extensive experience in economics, data science, and AI, and my unique perspective that merges behavioural sciences and technology within the field of computational social science.

At the BRAINS lab, I work across disciplines with UX designers and behavioural scientists to construct experiments that include psychophysiological data in the lab.

As a behavioural scientist at the BRAINS lab, I aim to apply the theoretical work on ethical systems of a number of thinkers, including Amartya Sen, Shoshana Zuboff, Luciano Floridi, and Ruha Benjamin, to my approach to designing experiments, interpreting results, and developing ethical guidelines for research and technology.

Academic responsibilities

Senior Lecturer

Qualifications

  • experimental economics
  • game theory
  • agent based models
  • Machine Learning
  • AI
  • social network theory
  • behavioural sciences
  • computational social sciences

Teaching and learning

While a master's student at Columbia University, I co-designed and co-taught a graduate course on complexity science. The course covered topics such as network theory, agent-based modeling, nonlinear dynamics, and emergence, while also introducing students to the philosophical and methodological underpinnings of the field.

Much more recently, I recorded a digital course on advanced AI and machine learning systems, which will be released this summer or early fall. This course will guide students through the various modules and modes of intelligence, with a focus on ethics as the crown jewel of intelligence.

In the upcoming fall semester, I will teach a behavioral science module that covers topics from experimental and computational social sciences, with elements of AI and ML. Students will learn how to use behavioral theories and experiments to understand and influence human behavior in various contexts while also being introduced to the ethical and practical challenges of the field.

I am committed to staying up-to-date with the latest developments and innovations in my fields of expertise. I engage my students with interactive and immersive learning experiences that stimulate their curiosity and creativity. The BRAINS lab is equipped with research tools such as VR glasses, emotive, haptics, eye tracking, iMotive software, Python, R, NetLogo, z-tree etc., which I teach my students to use for behavioral science research.```

Qualifications and expertise

  • behavioural economics
  • experimental economics
  • computational social sciences
  • game theory
  • network theory
  • AI and ML
  • data science
  • complexity science

Videos of my work

Social media

LinkedIn