Dr. Sabrina Pagano: Senior Research Scientist

Dr. Sabrina Pagano recently joined NSI as a Senior Research Scientist. In this capacity, she provides topical, methodological, and statistical expertise to support several DoD and Intelligence Community projects. Prior to NSI, Dr. Pagano was a Senior Research Scientist for Defense Group, Inc. (DGI), where she was also the Acting Director for their Behavioral Sciences Program at the Center for Intelligence Research and Analysis. For DGI, she synthesized social psychology and related social science knowledge to create high-value, actionable products for the defense and intelligence communities. Her work included conducting research and analysis on topics ranging from post-traumatic stress disorder to the neural correlates of persuasion, message propagation, and trust. Prior to working at DGI, Dr. Pagano was a Faculty Fellow Researcher and Lecturer at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). In addition to teaching four courses, she led the social psychology arm of a large interdisciplinary project investigating deficits in social motives and moral emotions in frontotemporal dementia, a neurodegenerative disease. Dr. Pagano earned her Ph.D. and M.A. in Social Psychology (with a minor in Measurement and Psychometrics) from UCLA. Her research focused primarily on the relationship between people’s experience of distinct moral emotions and their support for distinct political or prosocial actions. She also conducted research in several other areas relevant to interpersonal and intergroup relations, such as human dignity. Dr. Pagano earned a dual B.A. in Psychology and Political Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.