Noshir Contractor participated in the “Balancing AI across Regulation, Innovation & Safety” panel at the UK – India AI Conference 2025 today. He joined leading experts in two panel discussions, exploring the vital intersections of AI development concerning regulation, innovation, and safety. He started at the “Automation vs. Augmentation: Finding the Right Balance for the Future of Work” panel discussing theintersection of AI with workforce dynamics. He then contributed to “Balancing AI across Regulation, Innovation & Safety” panel.
Noshir Contractor & Team’s Latest Research in Scientific Reports
The paper “The Differential Impacts of Team Diversity as Variability Versus Atypicality on Team Effectiveness,” published in Scientific Reports, examines how two types of team diversity—variability and atypicality—affect team performance. Authored by Neelam Modi, Alina Lungeanu, Leslie DeChurch, and Noshir Contractor, this research explores whether teams with varied backgrounds or those with members who all share an underrepresented status work better and why. This study provides important insights for organizations looking to improve their team strategies.
Access the full study here: Read it now!
SONIC Lab Shines at NASA Human Research Program Investigators’ Workshop 2025
SONIC Lab had a productive week at the NASA Human Research Program Investigators’ Workshop in Galveston, TX from Jan 28-31, 2025! Here are some highlights from our presentations:
Oral Presentations:
- “Teams that SIRIUSly Go the Distance: Effect of Isolation and Confinement on Team Performance” – DeChurch, Chan, Lungeanu, Contractor
- “TEAMSTaR: Supporting Resilient Teams to Go the Distance” – Contractor, Chan, Lungeanu, DeChurch, Bell
Poster Presentations:
- “PRISM: Performance Reimagined in Spaceflight Multiteam Systems” – Chan, DeChurch, Contractor
- “Paired for Success: Operationally Building Crew Communication” – Chan, Sudarsan, DeChurch, Lungeanu, Bell, Contractor
- “Improving Space Mission Success Through Team State-Building Activities” – Qian, Chan, Lungeanu, DeChurch, Bell, Contractor
We also presented “Collective Attention in Spaceflight Multiteam Systems: Mitigating the Negative Impact of Communication Delays” at the workshop.
Noshir Contractor Explores Digital Education at Vishwakarma University Conference
Professor Contractor, a distinguished researcher from Northwestern University, discussed innovative strategies in digital education that are shaping the future of learning. The session provided valuable insights into the integration of technology in educational settings, highlighting both current achievements and future potentials in digital learning.
Thank you for joining us at the International Conference on “Elevating Academic Standards and Practices in Higher Education”!
TEAMS: Teamwork-Enhancing Adaptive Machine Synergies (ARL)
Funded by U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL): W911NF-23-2-0217-P00002
Project Overview
Research Team
Publications
Project Overview
Project TEAMS (Teamwork-Enhancing Adaptive Machine Synergies) aims to improve the effectiveness of multiteam systems (MTS) by leveraging AI to enhance coordination and communication. The project will investigate how AI can help manage the complex information processing demands inherent in MTS, where multiple teams collaborate to achieve a shared goal. By introducing AI-driven courses of action and facilitating interactions between human and AI team members, the project seeks to improve MTS performance by reducing process losses and increasing synergy. Controlled experiments using a simulated space exploration task will assess the impact of AI on various factors such as team performance, inter-team trust, and conflict. This research has the potential to transform teamwork in complex organizations by providing a competitive advantage through AI-augmented collaboration.
Research Team
Publications
soon
Advancing Diverse Viable Effective Networked Teams (ADVENT)
Sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF)
Award number 2341432
Award number 2341432
This project addresses the challenge of forming high-performance, high-viability teams with significant heterogeneity and affinity levels. This project aims to create an open-source computational network model to optimize team formation by integrating functional individual differences and member affinity. The researchers train and test this computational model using empirical data from four distinct teaming contexts: scientific collaborations, open-source software development, space crews simulating long-duration space exploration missions, and project teams among students in educational and executive development programs. Utilizing the Multitheoretical Multilevel (MTML) framework, the researchers explore how teams within social networks can form at various levels (individual, dyad, triad, and group) and seek to maximize heterogeneity in certain characteristics while enhancing members’ affinity in others. Key goals include developing an MTML model to elucidate team assembly mechanisms, implementing a data-driven computational model to estimate team performance and viability based on member and network attributes, conducting virtual experiments to explore the impacts of various team configurations, and publishing an interactive web-based Exploratorium for users to simulate team performance and viability dynamically.
Team Members:
- Noshir Contractor
- Diego Gomez Zara
- Jiarui Xia
- Gabriel Garlough-Shah
Noshir Contractor speaks with CARE in new lecture series
SONIC Director Noshir Contractor joined the Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE) to speak about network science and how it can support applied communication scholarship. Professor Contractor spoke as part of the second lecture in the Future Directions of Applied Communication Research Lecture Series (https://youtu.be/6WvVHpYpRkc). Read more here.
Noshir Contractor Serves as Panelist at 50th Anniversary of the Internet Celebration
On July 15th, SONIC Director Noshir Contractor participated as a panelist at an event celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Internet, held at the Royal Society in London. Fellow panelists include Sir Nigel Shadbolt from Oxford, Dame Wendy Hall from Southampton, Vicki Nash from Oxford Internet Institute, and Hannes Werthner from Technical University of Vienna. Panelists were joined by respondent Vincent “Vint” Nerf, the co-inventor of Internet. Read more about the event here.
SONIC Director Named Executive Director of Web Science Trust
SONIC Director Noshir Contractor has been named Executive Director of Web Science Trust (WST), effective May 1, 2024. WST is a UK-based charity that promotes understanding of how the Web and society mutually influence each other through education and research in web science. Professor Contractor announced that he is honored and excited to, “shape a future where the Web and AI can synergistically benefit an equitable and inclusive humanity.” Congratulations! Read more about WST and Professor Contractor’s service here.
Research Explores Effects of Instrumental and Expressive Networks on Thriving at Work
SONIC Director Noshir Contractor recently published an article alongside researchers Mengxiao Zhu, Ruoxiao Su, and Lin Liu. The article, titled “Communicate or not: Exploring the different effects of instrumental and expressive networks on thriving at work”, focuses on the ways in which employees are embedded in their social contexts. Using a structural equation model, the researchers found that communication relations differ in their connections to thriving at work depending on whether they are achieved via advice-seeking versus friendship relations. Read the article here.