I am Sabrina Mai,
a mathematical sociologist,
NLP practitioner,
and social network analyst.

I am a Sociology PhD student at the University of California, Irvine and a proud member of the Networks, Computation, and Social Dynamics (NCASD) Lab lead by Dr. Carter Butts. Prior to my time at UCI, I received a Bachelors of Mathematics from the University of Central Florida as a Provost Scholar.

I am primarily interested in mathematical models of sociological phenomena, primarily of socio-cogntive models of message interaction. My colleagues and I are interested in understanding the relationships between various types of message interaction, namely between retweeting and favoriting on Twitter. Our previous research has looked at factors of message retransmission in the context of COVID-19 communications on Twitter.

I am also interested in the uses of Natural Language Processing (NLP) in the social sciences. My recent work has comprised of using kernel methods to classify topics discussed by organizations and officials during the COVID-19 pandemic.

I invite you to view my curriculum vitae for details on my professional works: