Dominick Wright

Dominick’ Wright is a doctoral candidate at the University of Michigan, on schedule to defend his dissertation in the summer of 2009 and receive his degree in political science by winter of the same year. Prior to entering graduate school, he worked as a political consultant to the Missouri State Senate (2002) and to the City Council of Kansas City, Missouri (2002-2004). He holds BA’s in political science and French with specialties in international affairs and translations from Truman State University (2002).
As a doctoral student, he has studied using formal methods (e.g., game theory and agent-based modeling), advanced statistical methods, and survey methods. His current focus is institutional development, national security, and counterterrorism. A combination of the three areas resulted in his dissertation thesis describing how democratic institutions affect governmental responses to terrorist activities. As executive director of the John Jay ARTIS Transnational Terrorism Database (JJATT) project led by Scott Atran, he has managed development of a database on the individual characteristics of terrorists and the relational networks that have evolved between them.
Recently, Wright has received an IGERT-IDEAS NSF fellowship for his agent-based modeling work on counterterrorism and lectured at the University of Michigan and the University of North Texas.