Omidyar Postdoctoral Fellow, Santa Fe Institute (2024 - present)

Post-doctoral researcher, Stanford University (2023 - 2024)

• • Host: Marcus W. Feldman

Ph.D. in Biology, Stanford University (2018 - 2023)

• • Advised by Marcus W. Feldman

  • Dissertation: "Evolutionary dynamics of conformity"

B.S. in Ecology, Behavior, and Evolution, University of California, Los Angeles (2014 - 2018)

• • Honors thesis advised by Peter Nonacs, and conducted additional research in the lab of Daniel M. T. Fessler 

  • Summa cum laude

• • Selected as one of ∼30 participants for the Rising Stars in Computational and Data Sciences Workshop, 2026

  • Runner-up, John Maynard Smith Prize from the European Society for Evolutionary Biology, 2025

  • Samuel Karlin Prize in Mathematical Biology for Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, 2023

  • Centennial Teaching Assistant Award, Stanford University, 2021 

  • Norman K. Wessells Award for teaching, Stanford University, 2020 

  • Excellence in Teaching Award, Stanford University, 2020 

  • Excellence in Teaching Award, Stanford University, 2019 

  • Robert E. Lasiewski Award for outstanding graduate or undergraduate research, UCLA, 2018

  • Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society, 2018  

  • Highest Departmental Honors, UCLA, 2018

  • College Honors, UCLA, 2018

• Omidyar Research Fellowship, Santa Fe Institute (2024 - present)

• Stanford Center for Computational, Evolutionary, and Human Genomics Predoctoral Fellowship (2022 - 2023)

• Stanford Graduate Fellowship in Science and Engineering (2018 - 2021)

Journal Articles

For links to articles, see this page.

1. Heinrich Mora, E.*, Denton, K.K.*, Palmer M.E., Feldman M.W. (2025). Conformity to continuous and discrete ordered traits. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 122(3): e2417078122.
   *Co-first authors

2. Denton, K.K., Liberman, U., and Feldman, M.W. (2024). On random conformity bias in cultural transmission of polychotomous traits. Theoretical Population Biology, 156: 5-11.

3. Nonacs, P., and Denton, K.K. (2023). Eusociality is not a major evolutionary transition, and why that matters. Insectes Sociaux, 71: 17-27.

4. Denton, K.K., Kendal, J.R., Ihara, Y., and Feldman, M.W. (2023). Cultural niche construction with application to fertility control: A model for education and social transmission of contraceptive use. Theoretical Population Biology, 153: 1-14.

5. Lappo, E., Denton, K.K., and Feldman, M.W. (2023). Conformity and anti-conformity in a finite population. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 562: 111429.

6. Denton, K.K., Ram, Y., and Feldman, M.W. (2023). Conditions that favour cumulative cultural evolution. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 378: 20210400.

7. Denton, K.K., Liberman, U., and Feldman, M.W. (2022). Polychotomous traits and evolution under conformity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119(39): e2205914119.

8. Denton, K.K., Ram, Y., and Feldman, M.W. (2022). Conformity and content-biased cultural transmission in the evolution of altruism. Theoretical Population Biology, 143: 52-61.

9. Robin, A.N., Denton, K.K., Horna Lowell, E.S., Dulay, T., Ebrahimi, S., Johnson, G.C., Mai, D., O’Fallon, S., Philson, C.S., Speck, H.P., Zhang, X.P., and Nonacs, P. (2021). Major evolutionary transitions and the roles of facilitation and information in ecosystem transformations. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 9: 711556.

10. Denton, K.K., Liberman, U., and Feldman, M.W. (2021). On randomly changing conformity bias in cultural transmission. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(34): e2107204118.

11. Denton, K.K., Ram, Y., Liberman, U., and Feldman, M.W. (2020). Cultural evolution of conformity and anticonformity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(24): 13603-13614.

12. Bryant, G.A., Fessler, D.M.T., Fusaroli, R., Clint, E., Amir, D., Chavez, B., Denton, K.K., Diaz, C., Duran, L.T., Fančovičová, J., Fux, M., Ginting, E.F., Hasan, Y., Hu, A., Kamble, S.V., Kameda, T., Kuroda, K., Li, N.P., Luberti, F.R., Peyravi, R., Prokop, P., Quintelier, K.J.P., Shin, H.J., Stieger, S., Sugiyama, L.S., van den Hende, E.A., Viciana-Asensio, H., Yildizhan, S.E., Yong, J.C., Yuditha, T., and Zhou, Y. (2018). The perception of spontaneous and volitional laughter across 21 societies. Psychological Science, 29(9), 1515-1525.

13. Denton, K.K. and Nonacs, P. (2018). Habitat complexity and predictability effects on finding and collecting food when ants search as cooperative groups. Animal Behaviour, 141, 77-84.

14. Hedley, R.W., Denton, K.K., and Weiss, R.E. (2017). Accounting for syntax in analyses of countersinging reveals hidden vocal dynamics in a songbird with a large repertoire. Animal Behaviour, 131, 23-32.

15. Denton, K.K. and Krebs, D.L. (2017). Rational and emotional sources of moral decision-making: An evolutionary-developmental account. Evolutionary Psychological Science, 3(1), 72-85.

Preprint

1. Beger, C., Yi, R., Fu, S., Denton, K.K., Moskvichev, A., Tsai, S. W., Rajamanickam, S., and Mitchell, M. (2025). Do AI models perform human-like abstract reasoning across modalities? arXiv:2510.02125. 

Other Publications

1. Denton, K.K., Heinrich Mora, E., Egan, N., and Feldman, M.W. (2025). Culture is not ecology. Evolution and Human Behavior, 46(5): 106717.
   (An invited commentary on "The ecological approach to culture" by Baumard and André.)

2. Nonacs, P., Denton, K.K., Robin, A.N., Helanterä, H., and Kapheim, K.M. (2022). Editorial: Social evolution and the what, when, why and how of the major evolutionary transitions in the history of life. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 10: 1109484.

3. Krebs, D.L. and Denton, K.K. (2017). The evolution of sociality, helping, and morality. In P. Zuckerman and J. R. Shook (Eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Secularism, pp. 638-654. Oxford University Press.

4. Denton, K.K. (2016). Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma model. In T. Shackelford and V. Weekes-Shackelford (Eds.) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Switzerland: Springer.

5. Denton, K.K. and Krebs, D.L. (2016). Symbiosis and mutualism. In T. Shackelford and V. Weekes-Shackelford (Eds.) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Switzerland: Springer.

6. Krebs, D.L. and Denton, K.K. (2016). Group selection. In H. Miller Jr. (Ed.) SAGE Encyclopedia of Theory in Psychology, Vol. 1, pp. 392-393.

7. Krebs, D.L. and Denton, K.K. (2013). How did morality originate? A review of Christopher Boehm, Moral Origins: The Evolution of Virtue, Altruism, and Shame. Evolutionary Psychology, 11(1), 9-17.

Numbers indicate how many reviews were submitted.

• PNAS (7)

• Science (2)

• Scientific Reports (1)

• PLOS Computational Biology (1)

• Human Nature (5)

• Theoretical Population Biology (1)

For upcoming teaching and course descriptions, see this page!

Stanford University

Biosciences 213: Ecology and Evolution of Altruism, Mini-Course, Stanford University

• Co-creator and co-instructor, Spring 2023

Biology 85: Evolution, Stanford University

• Head Teaching Assistant, Winter 2020

• Teaching Assistant, Winter 2019

Biology 282: Modeling Cultural Evolution, Stanford University

• Two guest lectures, Winter 2024

• Guest lecture, Winter 2021

Biology 283: Theoretical Population Genetics, Stanford University

• Guest lecture, Winter 2020

Online 

Code in Place, an introductory Python course

• Section Leader, Spring 2021 and 2025

Elementary School

Science Bus, an outreach program led by Stanford students

• Developed and taught science lessons for East Palo Alto Charter School, Winter 2020, 2021; Fall 2019, 2023

Cal Teach Program, UCLA

• Science teaching assistant at UCLA Lab School, Winter 2015

Postdoctoral Mentoring Certificate Tier 1, 2024

• Completion of 5 mentoring workshops for postdoctoral researchers (11 hours total)

Stanford Teaching Workshop for Postdoctoral Scholars, 2024

• 3-day (2.5 hours/day) workshop on teaching in the biomedical/life sciences
  

Stanford Scientific Teaching Summer Institute, 2022

• 24 hours of professional development in teaching

• Volunteer at the Santa Fe Animal Shelter, fostering cats ranging from neonatal kittens to adults (2300+ hours) (5/2025–present)

• Member of the Review Committee for the Santa Fe Institute’s Omidyar Postdoctoral Fellowship applications (10/2025–12/2025)

• Assisted in giving a tutorial on flash talks for SFI Undergraduate Complexity Researchers (6/2025)

• Judge for the W. D. Hamilton Award presentations at the Evolution Conference (5/2025)

• Volunteer at Stanford Biosciences Activity and Resource Fair (10/2023)

• Graduate Student Mentor, Stanford Biology (9/2019–6/2023)

• Chair, Stanford Biology Interview and Visit Day Committee (11/2022–3/2023) 

• Graduate Student Representative, Stanford Ecology & Evolution Graduate Admissions Committee (12/2021 and 12/2022)

• Volunteer in Stanford Biology Ph.D. Preview Program (Fall 2020, 2021, and 2022) 

• Journal Club Mentor, Stanford ADVANCE Summer Institute (Summer 2022)

• Judge for undergraduate poster presentations at the Stanford Research Conference (4/2022)

• Mentor, First-Generation and/or Low Income (FLI) Mentorship Program at Stanford (Winter 2022)

• Member of Stanford Biology Interview Event Student Committee (3/2020)

• Organizer for Stanford Biology Graduate Student Seminar (9/2019–1/2020)

• Member of Editorial Board for the UCLA Undergraduate Science Journal (1/2017–4/2017)

• Note-taker for the Center for Accessible Education, UCLA (3/2015–6/2015) 

• Rising Stars in Computational and Data Sciences Workshop. Beyond the average of our peers: Social opinion updating in theory and data. (2026)

• (Invited Talk) TEDxNewEngland. Theme: Agency. Topic: Cultural evolution. (2025)

• Evolution Conference. Biased cultural transmission: From social animals to artificial intelligence. (2025)

• (Invited Talk) Santa Fe Institute Working Group: Building a Science of Cultural Evolution for the 21st Century. Some thoughts on cultural evolution. (2025)

• Society for Modeling and Theory in Population Biology: Grad and Postdoc Research Showcase. Biased decision-making in organisms and large language models. (2025)

• (Invited Talk) Center for Computational, Evolutionary, and Human Genomics (CEHG) Symposium. Following the majority or the mean: Conformity in humans and large language models. (2025)

• Winter Quantitative Biology Conference. Conformity to continuous and discrete ordered traits. (2025)

• Cultural Evolution Society Conference. Conditions that favour cumulative cultural evolution. (2024)

• (Invited Talk) Banff International Research Station Workshop on Modeling and Theory in Population Biology. Modelling constant and stochastically variable conformity. (2024)

• (Invited Talk) Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology. Evolutionary dynamics of conformity. (2023)

• Evolution Conference. Models for the evolution of conformity. (2022)

• Bay Area Population Genomics Conference XIX. Models of evolution under conformity and anti-conformity. (2022)

• (Co-Presenter; Invited Talk) Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution - Frontiers Conversations Webinar. Major evolutionary transitions and the roles of facilitation and information in ecosystem transformations. (2021)

• The Gruter Institute for Law and Behavioral Research - Virtual Conference. Oblique transmission and conformity in the evolution of altruism by kin selection. (2020)

• Southern California Animal Behavior Mini-Conference, UCLA. Habitat complexity and predictability effects on finding and collecting food when ants search as cooperative groups. (2018)

• Population, Evolutionary, and Quantitative Genetics Conference: Evolution of modifiers of conformity (2022)

• The Royal Society Scientific Meeting: The emergence of collective knowledge and cumulative culture in animals, humans and machines (virtually): Why is cumulative culture rare in nature? (2022) 

• The Armen Show Podcast: Following the majority - How conformity shapes culture and AI

• SIAM News: Mathematical framework explains evolutionary dynamics of behavior

• Santa Fe Institute News: Kaleda Denton named runner-up for 2025 John Maynard Smith Prize

• Santa Fe Institute News: New study offers insights into how populations conform or go against the crowd 

• Stanford News: Stanford researchers model the role of influencers in shaping fads

• BBC Future: Why ‘quirky’ people are attractive