David Broniatowski

David A. Broniatowski is a systems engineer and behavioral scientist whose work examines how information flows through complex sociotechnical systems. He is a Professor, Research Director of GW TAI, and Deputy Director of NIST-NSF TRAILS (Trustworthy AI in Law & Society) Institute, where he studies the intersection of artificial intelligence, platform architecture, public health, and democratic governance. His research integrates engineering systems thinking with cognitive science, drawing on frameworks such as Fuzzy-Trace Theory to understand how people form meaning, make decisions under risk, and respond to misinformation. He is particularly known for empirical analyses of social media ecosystems, including large-scale studies of public health settings, platform moderation policies, and the architectural features that shape online discourse. His work has demonstrated how system design can amplify or constrain the spread of low-quality information, and how moderation policies interact with platform structure in sometimes counterintuitive ways. His scholarship contributes to explainable and interpretable AI, including authorship of a 2021 NIST report on the psychological foundations of explainability. He has published extensively in journals spanning public health, decision science, systems engineering, and computational social science, and his research has informed public debate on platform governance and science communication. Across his academic and leadership roles, Broniatowski brings a systems-level perspective to contemporary challenges in AI and information integrity, emphasizing that durable solutions require aligning institutional incentives, technical architecture, and human cognition