SONIC alum Brian Keegan (Northeastern University) delivered a keynote at the Computational Approaches to Social Modeling (ChASM) workshop at Web Sci 2014 in Bloomington, IN on June 23rd
For more information and the book of Abstracts visit: http://www.chasm.ws/program.html
Aaron Schecter and Noshir Contractor coauthored (with Jana Diesner, Amirhossein Aleyasen, Shubhamshu Mishra) a paper titled “Comparison of explicit and implicit social networks constructed from communication data” at the Computational Approaches to Social Modeling (ChASM) workshop at Web Sci 2014 in Bloomington, IN on June 23rd
For more information and the book of Abstracts visit: http://www.chasm.ws/program.html
New Online Tool Can Map Your Personality
You click a button, the computer wurrs, and out comes a spidery pentagon that claims to map your personality. That pentagon is the product of a software startup called Five, which launched the personality-mapping tool Tuesday. The company analyzes Facebook posts and parses their language structure to deduce a user’s personality. The website then maps your personality on five axes that correspond to five character traits—extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness. According to Business Insider, the five traits were drawn from a study conducted at the University of Pennsylvania, which identified those traits as the “Big Five”. The site also lets you see which of the personality prognoses of your friends and compare your compatibility. It also includes the personalities of major figures, who range from Barack Obama to Mahatma Gandhi. I, for example, was classified as spontaneous and analytical—a deduction drawn from my exceedingly sparse Facebook presence. Five Labs also told me that I am 54 percent similar to Andy Warhol, while (shockingly!) only 8 percent similar to Oprah Winfrey. Five Labs founder Nikita Bier told the New York Times Wednesday that he has seen an initially strong response to the tool. According to a Facebook post by Bier, 45 million people created profiles to have their personalities analyzed during the first 24 hours that the tool was live. The tool obviously has some flaws (its prognoses seemed wildly off base for a few of my Facebook friends). And the wild enrollment may owe more to the site’s seamless design than the quality of its personality predictions. But what’s creepiest and perhaps most enlightening about the tool is that it offers a look at what major companies like Google and Facebook may be able to deduce from looking at our behavior online. Those companies have developed increasingly sophisticated tools to quantify user personalities and preferences in recent years and at least this tool offers us a window into how a company could do that. http://www.boston.com/business/technology/2014/06/12/new-online-tool-can-map-your-personality/4Pu9Offr3ZwWoLEZ91KyLO/story.html
Quantum computing explained: harnessing particle physics to work faster
Around the world teams of scientists are working on the next technological revolution: quantum computing. But what makes it so special? And why do we need it? We ask physicist Dr. Ruth Oulton of the Bristol University to explain. http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/mar/06/quantum-computing-explained-particle-mechanics
Former SONIC members Brooke Foucault Welles and Tommy Rouse published Virtually Friends: An Exploration of Friendship Claims and Expectations in Immersive Virtual Worlds
Brooke Foucault Welles and Tommy Rouse published Virtually Friends: An Exploration of Friendship Claims and Expectations in Immersive Virtual Worlds in the Journal of Virtual Worlds Research.
Sophia Sullivan successfully defended her Ph.D. thesis titled The Role of Leadership in Facilitating Innovation in Multiteam Systems
Sophia Sullivan successfully defended her Ph.D. thesis titled The Role of Leadership in Facilitating Innovation in Multiteam Systems on Friday, June 6, 2014. We are very proud of her work and wish her a bright future. Congratulations, Dr. Sullivan!
Alina Lungeanu successfully defended her dissertation proposal titled Understanding the Assembly and Performance of Interdisciplinary Scientific Teams during the Emergence of a Nascent Scientific Field
Alina Lungeanu successfully defended her dissertation proposal titled “Understanding the Assembly and Performance of Interdisciplinary Scientific Teams during the Emergence of a Nascent Scientific Field” on Thursday, June 5, 2014.
SONIC Welcomes Visiting Scholars Roger Leenders, Alex Stivala, and Lidwien van de Wijngaert
SONIC is proud to welcome visitors Roger Leenders, Alex Stivala, and Lidwien van de Wijngaert.
Roger Leenders is Professor of Intra-Organizational Networks at Tilburg University. His research mainly focuses on the antecedents and consequences of networks in and of teams. A core research theme is the creativity of teams: what are the network drivers (and inhibitors) of the creative performance of teams? He will be working with us for two months, and arrived two weeks ago.
Alex Stivala is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Melbourne’s Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences. His research ranges from detecting protein substructures to building models for the analysis of cultural dissemination. He will be working with the SONIC research group for two weeks.
Lidwien van de Wijngaert is a Senior Researcher at the Center for e-Government Studies at the University of Twente, Netherlands. With the Center for e-Government Studies Lidwien develops strategies and offers advice for governmental entities from the national to local level. She will be providing her expertise this week.
Noshir Contractor participated in a panel titled “Leveraging Social Network Analysis in I/O Science & Practice” at the Society for Industrial & Organizational Psychology Annual Conference on May 16, 2014
