Faculty
Abdullah Almaatouq is a computational social scientist and the Douglas Drane Career Development Assistant Professor in Information Technology and Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
Abdullah’s research focuses on improving cooperation, coordination, and collective intelligence in decision-making systems, such as teams, committees, crowds, markets, and elections. Abdullah also explores ways to advance social and behavioral research methodology through innovative research designs and theory-building strategies, with the ultimate goal of developing a deeper understanding of collective decision systems and how to design them effectively in various contexts. He is affiliated with the MIT Center for Computational Engineering, the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, and the MIT Connection Science Research Initiative.
Abdullah holds a PhD in computational science and engineering, as well as dual master's degrees in media arts and sciences (MIT Media Lab) and computational science and engineering from MIT. Prior to joining MIT, he earned his undergraduate degree from Southampton University in the United Kingdom.
Featured Publication
"Task Complexity Moderates Group Synergy."Almaatouq, Abdullah, Mohammed Alsobay, Ming Yin, and Duncan J. Watts. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America Vol. 118, No. 36 (2021): e210106211. Download Paper.
Featured Publication
"Adaptive Social Networks Promote the Wisdom of Crowds."Almaatouq, Abdullah, Alejandro Noriega-Campero, Abdulrahman Alotaibi, P.M. Krafft, Mehdi Moussaid, and Alex Pentland. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Vol. 117, No. 21 (2020): 11379-86. Download Paper.
Almaatouq, Abdullah, Mohammed Alsobay, Ming Yin, and Duncan J. Watts. Topics in Cognitive Science. Forthcoming.
Vaccaro, Michelle, Abdullah Almaatouq, and Thomas W. Malone. Nature Human Behaviour. Forthcoming.
Almaatouq, Abdullah, Thomas L. Griffiths, Jordan Suchow, Mark E. Whiting, James Evans, and Duncan J Watts. Behavioral and Brain Sciences Vol. 47, (2024): e65. PsyArXiv Preprint.
Xinlan, Emily Hu, Linnea Gandhi, Mark E. Whiting, Duncan J. Watts, and Abdullah Almaatouq, MIT Sloan Working Paper 6970-23. Cambridge, MA: MIT Sloan School of Management, December 2023.
“When Combinations of Humans and AI Are Useful” is the first large-scale meta-analysis conducted to better understand when human-AI combinations are useful in task completion, and when they are not.
The City of Leuven, Belgium sought to leverage digital technologies and advanced analytics to promote sustainable urban mobility. To make this happen, the city collaborated with global digital engineering company and Smart Industry leader Akkodis – and a team of Master of Business Analytics (MBAn) students taking Analytics Lab (A-Lab) couldn’t wait to join in.
"Users may be hesitant to trust a system whose decision-making process they do not understand."
Teams, it turns out, are better at solving complex problems, according to a recent paper by professor Abdullah Almaatouq.
"Are two heads better than one? Or do too many cooks spoil the broth?"
A new study ... digs into the question of whether it's better for employees to work in teams or alone.
