Noshir Contractor recently completed teaching a Social Network Analysis class at the University of Science and Technology of China. The class was co-taught by SONIC alumnus Mengxiao Zhu, who is now a distinguished scholar at University of Science and Technology of China. The class was TA’ed by Jasmine Wu and Ruoxiao Su. The course explored the use of social network analysis to understand the growing connectivity and complexity in the world around us on different scales – ranging from small groups to the World Wide Web. Check out this Zoom image from a session!

On March 4th, Noshir Contractor was involved in a Data Science & Engineering Panel Discussion for undergraduate students. The goal of this panel was to highlight some of the data-oriented projects that McCormick faculty engage in, and to bring light to opportunities available for students with an interest in data science. If you are interested in learning more about data science opportunities at SONIC, please visit the Join Us tab of our website!

We have an opportunity for students to join us as Data Science Interns, and receive class credit for research work in the lab. There is a possibility to extend the internship to subsequent quarters. Contact Dorothea Boyle (dorothea.boyle@northwestern.edu) or Noshir Contractor (ncontractor@gmail.com) with questions.

Detailed description of internship available for Winter 2022 can be found here.

On January 10th, Noshir Contractor gave a talk at the Laboratory for Computational Social Systems! His talk was titled “People Analytics: Using Digital Exhaust from the Web to Leverage Network Insights in the Algorithmically Infused Workplace”. Check out the link to the abstract and more information about other talks at LCS2 here!

On January 12th 2022, Neelam Modi and Noshir Contractor partnered with the National Institute of Industrial Engineering in Mumbai to launch the “Global Online Certification Course on Social Network Analysis and its Applications”. Check out this image from the first week of class and this LinkedIn post from NITIE with details on the participant response!

Congratulations to Kyosuke Tanaka and Noshir Contractor on their paper acceptance for the hybrid 72nd Annual ICA Conference, One World, One Network‽ Their paper, titled “Knowing is not Enough: How Network Awareness and Acuity are Associated,” will be presented at the conference in May.

Over the past few months, Noshir Contractor had the opportunity to be a guest speaker and Keynote speaker at Hong Kong Baptist University and Fudan University respectively! Check out his talk at Hong Kong Baptist University, titled “People Analytics in Algorithmically Infused Used Workplace” linked here.

Check out this research meeting about collaborating on efforts that are part of a joint Center for Sports Science and Analytics between Northwestern and IIT Madras!

Check out SONIC’s feature in the podcast “Babbage” from The Economist! You can listen to the podcast episode here. Keep an eye out for SONIC’s work between 18 minutes and 32 seconds to 26 minutes and 23 seconds!

Congratulations to Alina Lungeanu, Leslie DeChurch and Noshir Contractor for their new publication in Leadership Quarterly! Their paper, “Leading teams over time through space: Computational experiments on leadership network archetypes” can be found here.