SONIC Director Noshir Contractor will be giving a keynote address on September 16th at 9:30am China time on People Analytics: Using Digital Exhaust from the Web to Leverage Network Insights in the Algorithmically Infused Workplace. The keynote will be given as part of the 2023 Annual Meeting of the Association of Intelligence and Computational Communication Research. Check out the International Communication Association for more info. 
The Effect of Long-Term Isolation in Spaceflight
ATLAS Lab Director Leslie DeChurch, SONIC Affiliated Faculty Alina Lungeanu, and SONIC Director Noshir Contractor have collaborated on a new article recently published in journal Acta Astronautics. Their research analyzes how space crews embarking on deep space missions can effectively maintain positive working relationships, even while dealing with long-term isolation, highly stressful scenarios, and conflicting leadership dynamics. The results of this research can prove invaluable for the future of spaceflight and the cultivation of enduring, constructive teamwork. Access the article by October 22 here.
Milan Shah’s SURA Program Research
Over the past months, the Institute for Policy Research has run their annual Summer Undergraduate Research Assistants (SURA) program. Undergraduate student Milan Shah has been working with SONIC Director Noshir Contractor, Professor Hyejin Youn, and PhD student Megan Chan to understand effective communication in deep-space exploration. The interdisciplinary results of this research could prove invaluable for the future of frontier exploration. Read more about their research here— great work Milan!
SONIC Welcomes Visiting Researcher Pavel Krivitsky
Over the past few weeks, SONIC has had the honor of hosting Dr. Pavel Krivitsky, expert on social network analysis from the University of New South Wales Sydney. While in Evanston, Dr. Krivitsky discussed social network research and his own discoveries of methods and models for analyzing complex network data and processes. We thank Dr. Krivitsky for his visit and for sharing his expertise!
Wishing the Best to Our Departing SONIC Members
Last week, the SONIC team said goodbye to two of our own– Graduate Student Researcher Jasmine Wu, and Research Assistant Professor Alina Lungeanu. Jasmine is off to the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, and Alina will be continuing her work at Northeastern University. We thank them both for the years of work and passion they’ve spent at SONIC, and we wish them the best in their future endeavors! 
SONIC Researchers highlighted by the Daily Northwestern for work on MOOCs
In a recent article entitled “Nine faculty groups to receive grants for digital and online technology,” the Daily Northwestern singled out lab members Noshir Contractor, Seyed Iravani, and Jacqueline Ng for their work “designing Nebula, which is a graphical and networked discussion board to generate meaningful discussion and improve learning retention in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)”.
Read the full article HERE.
SONIC Lab welcomes Dan Newman for his sabbatical research
Dan Newman is spending his sabbatical at SONIC doing research on team assembly, in collaboration with Marlon Twyman, Leslie DeChurch, and Noshir Contractor. These projects investigate how individuals get selected to join teams, on the basis of individual experience and demographics, past relationships, and endogenous network effects.
“Tracking the Social Networks of Genes Disrupted in Complex Diseases”
The Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics reports on a recent study by a team of scientists from DCB, UNIL, SIB, CHUV, MIT and Harvard. The team tracked the social networks of genes disrupted in complex diseases. Taking inspiration from social networks, the researchers applied techniques similar to those used in SNA to gain information about users (i.e. discrete genes) on the basis of their interconnections. After constructing accurate “maps” of gene networks for about 400 different human cell and tissue types, the team found that disease variants often affect groups of genes that were densely interconnected within regulatory networks. Furthermore, the affected network components precisely pinpointed with cell types or tissues that are implicated in disease processes. This finding confirms their hypothesis that genetic variants may impact genes that are connected within regulatory networks of tissues that are specific to certain diseases. X
The study also points to significant implications in future medical treatments: the accurate maps of gene networks for different tissues will likely advance our understandings of how diseases start and progress, and will facilitate in the design of targeted treatments in personalized medicine settings in the future.
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You can read Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics’ report here: http://www.
Noshir speaks at Lambda Pi Eta Choice Scholar Lecture
Lab Director, Noshir Contractor delivered a talk entitled “Leveraging Computational Social Science to address Grand Societal Challenges” as an invited member of the Lambda Pi Eta Choice Scholar Lecture Series at the University of California Santa Barbara on March 4th, 2016.
Full Citation:
Contractor, N. (March 4, 2016). Leveraging Computational Social Science to address Grand Societal Challenges. Lambda Pi Eta Choice Scholar Lecture at the University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA.
“How Do Our Social Networks Affect Our Health?”
This TED talk from Nicholas Christakis explores how social networks can be applied to understand many aspects of people’s lives. To illustrate this point, Christakis shows that close network ties with people who are obese increases someone obesity risk by 45%. The effect scales up to 3 degrees of separation. This means that people you may not even know or even interact with my have an impact your physical health – i.e. if a friend of a friend of a friend is obese, your risk of obesity is 10% higher than that expected by random chance. Christakis points the the underpinning phenomenon of homophily – birds of a feather flock together. For obese people, it could be that people of a similar body size tend to communicate or that people that have a common exposure to a certain health plugs communicate with one another. Further, if your friend adopts a behavior, the chances that you adopt that behavior too are much higher.
Listen to the full talk HERE.