Navigating Norms: Making Sense of Products in Contested Markets

Cyrus Dioun is currently an Assistant Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado, Denver, who is employing machine learning and computer vision to analyze the $7 billion state-legal cannabis industry in the United States. He is the founder of Oski Lab, a research group that brings undergraduate computer scientists and graduate students and faculty members in the social sciences together for unique research collaborations. During his fellowship at BIDS, Cyrus mentored over 50 undergraduate computer scientists, leading to a number of collaborations with professors and graduate students in the Department of Sociology and Haas School of Business.

As a BIDS Data Science Fellow, Cyrus was a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology. Working with Professor Heather Haveman, Cyrus is examined the relationship between legitimacy and price in both medical and recreational markets. For his dissertation, Cyrus mapped the relationship between market institutions; market technologies; and the ways that producers and consumers perceive, portray, and value cannabis products. Prior to starting his PhD, Cyrus completed an MA in quantitative methods in the social sciences at Columbia University. In addition to studying cannabis markets, Cyrus has collaborated on a number of projects related to a wide variety of topics, including wine, crowdfunding, the maker movement, masculinity, and higher education.

Heather A. Haveman is a Professor of Sociology and Business at UC Berkeley. She holds a BA in history and an MBA (from the University of Toronto), and a Ph.D. in organizational behavior and industrial relations (from UC Berkeley).  Following positions at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, Cornell University's Johnson Graduate School of Management, and Columbia University's Graduate School of Business, Professor Haveman joined UC Berkeley in July 2006. Her research interests include how organizations, the fields in which they are embedded, and the careers of their members and employees evolve. Her current work involves American magazines and wineries, Chinese listed firms, and the emerging marijuana market in several US states.