Biography

Dr. James A. Grand (Ph.D., Michigan State University) is an Associate Professor in the Social, Decision, and Organizational Sciences program at the University of Maryland. His main research interests focus on the interplay of knowledge-building, decision-making, collaboration, and performance at the individual and team levels. A significant theme of his work lies in exploring and understanding the emergent processes underlying these mechanisms by theoretically, computationally, and experimentally investigating how the behaviors and cognitions of individuals create, change, and/or maintain dynamics at collective levels (i.e., teams, multi-team systems, organizations, etc.) over time. More specific topics in his research stream focus on how planning/project teams gather and share information, develop collective knowledge, and make decisions based on their shared understanding, and how action-oriented teams (i.e., medical teams, military teams, sports teams, etc.) coordinate, regulate, and adapt their behavioral and cognitive resources/efforts to produce team performance outcomes. Additionally, he conducts research on the interaction between information processing and situational factors in relation to personnel training and testing/assessment outcomes. He also has methodological interests in computational modeling, simulation of dynamic processes, and Bayesian statistics.