Our lab director, Dr. Noshir Contractor, delivered a keynote speech at the 2020 ICA-affiliated New Media International (Virtual) Conference in Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU). The virtual conference featured past and present presidents of ICA — including Claes de Vreese, Terry Flew, Peng Hwa Ang, and Patrice Buzzanell — and attracted 506 participants, including faculties and students at SJTU. The conference centers around Intelligent Communication and Social Concerns and Dr. Noshir Contractor presented his research on “Teaming in the Time of Covid-19.” This conference is the first official event Dr. Contractor took part in as part of the ICA leadership team. 

For more information on the conference, check out the event details here.

We are thrilled to welcome two new members of the SONIC Research Group! 

This year, we have two new Ph.D. Students: Aaron Campbell and Neelam Modi. Aaron just received his Master’s degree in Communication from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is joining the Media, Technology, and Society (MTS) program. Neelam, on the other hand, is joining the Industrial Engineering & Management Sciences (IEMS) program here at Northwestern after working as a consultant for the last two years.

Head over to their pages on our website to learn more about them.

Excited to share that we have a new project funded by the National Science Foundation to study teaming in the time of Covid-19: understanding how technology affordances can enable collaboration during sudden workplace disruption.

Congratulations to PIs Noshir Contractor, co-I Leslie DeChurch, and collaborators Paul Leonardi, Jackie Ng Lane, and Michael Johnson!

Read more about the project here: https://bit.ly/3kmiKbt

Noshir delivered 2 talks at online sessions of Academy of Management 2020:

“Using AI to turbocharge organizational network analysis”
“Unravelling the sequential structural signatures of success in human agent teams: