Lazer is interested in computational social science and social networks, with a focus on misinformation and political communication. He co-directs the NULab for Texts, Maps, and Networks, Northeastern's center for digital humanities and computational social science. He is co-lead of the COVID states project — which charted public opinion in all 50 states through the pandemic — as well as the co-founder of Volunteer Science, a citizen science project to study human behavior. Lazer is an elected fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration and a visiting scholar at the Harvard University's Institute for Quantitative Social Science. Lazer has been the principal investigator on more than $13 million of grants from the NSF, ARL, ARO, IARPA, and other entities. He has served in multiple leadership and editorial positions, including as a board member for the International Network of Social Network Analysts (INSNA), reviewing editor for Science, associate editor of Social Networks and Network Science, and as a member of numerous other editorial boards and program committees.