News – Page 18 – The Science of Networks in Communities (SONIC)

Noshir Presenting at NCA 2020 Tomorrow!

2020-11-19 No Comments

Tomorrow (11/20), Noshir Contractor will be presenting at the National Communication Association (NCA) Convention. He will discuss topics surrounding AI and teams as part of a panel titled Team Communication Research in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.

Other speakers in the panel include:

Brooke Foucault Welles from Northeastern University
Javier Garcia from US CCDC Army Research Laboratory
Nina Lauharatanahirun from University of Pennsylvania and US CCDC Army Research Laboratory
Andrew Gambino from Penn State University
Christoph Riedl from Northeastern University
Leslide DeChurch from Northwestern University

More details on the panel can be found below:

Title: Team Communication Research in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Fri, 11/20: 3:30 PM – 4:45 PM EST

Room: Zoom Room 17

Artificial intelligence (AI) technology has accelerated at a rapid pace in recent years, presenting novel opportunities and challenges to the study of team communication. In this panel, we bring together experts who use AI in many different aspects of their team communication research, including: AI-supported data collection and analysis, behavioral modeling and prediction in teams, agent-based modeling of teams, and hybrid human-agent teams. This panel will feature short individual presentations about leading edge AI-team research, followed by discussion of critical issues in this domain including data security, ethics, privacy, and student training. Together, we aim to outline an agenda for future work where AI is thoughtfully integrated into team communication research.

Link: https://ww4.aievolution.com/nca2001/index.cfm?do=ev.viewEv&ev=11608

SONIC News

We have a new patent!

2020-11-03 No Comments

We are pleased to announce the grant of US Patent No. 10,795,896.

Our utility patent on Systems and Methods for Automatically Identifying Specific Teams of Users To Solve Specific and Real-time Problems describes a social network platform used to facilitate project team assembly.

The grant of this patent recognizes the quality of the innovation and research carried out by SONIC.

Congratulations to our inventors: Anup Sawant, Harshad Gado, and Noshir Contractor.

Check out our USPTO report for more information regarding the patent and/or software.

Conferences & Workshops, SONIC News

Watch Noshir Contractor’s SIOP 2020 and MORS Brownbag Talk

2020-11-02 No Comments

A few months ago, Noshir Contractor presented at the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP 2020) as well as at the Management and Organizations (MORS) Brownbag Series. His talk is on (Re-)pairing Teams for the Moon, and it is based on our NASA CREWS project. Check out a recording of the talk here:

SIOP 2020 Talk: https://bit.ly/2GnfNIz
MORS Brownbag Series: https://bit.ly/35UYyHm

Citation:

Contractor, N. (2020, May). (Re-)pairing Teams for the Moon. Speaker at MORS Brownbag Series, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL.
Antonne, B., DeChurch, L. A., Bell, S., & Contractor, N. S. (2020, April 21-25). Re-Pairing Teams for Long-Duration Space Exploration. Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) 2020, Virtual Conference.

SONIC News

Two new book chapters in Psychology and Human Performance in Space Programs

2020-10-30 No Comments

Sharing some wonderful news — We have two new book chapters published! Congratulations to our SONIC authors: graduate student Brennan Antone, Research Assistant Professor Alina Lungeanu, and Lab Director Noshir Contractor.

Other authors include Suzanne Bell from KBR, Jessica Mesmer-Magnus from the University of North Carolina Wilmington, and Alexa Harris, Ashley Niler and Leslie DeChurch from Northwestern University (ATLAS Lab).

Citation:

Antone, B., Lungeanu, A., Bell, S., De Church, L., & Contractor, N. (in press). Computational Modeling of Long-Distance Space Exploration: A Guide to Predictive and Prescriptive Approaches to the Dynamics of Team Composition. In L. Landon, S. Kelley, & E. Salas (Eds.), Psychology and Human Performance in Space Programs, Volume 1: Research at the Frontier. Abingdon, UK: Taylor & Francis.
Mesmer-Magnus, J., Lungeanu, A., Harris, A., Niler, A., DeChurch, L., Contractor, N. (in press). Working in Space: Managing Transitions between Tasks. In L. Landon, S. Kelley, & E. Salas (Eds.), Psychology and Human Performance in Space Programs, Volume 2: Extreme Application. Abingdon, UK: Taylor & Francis.

SONIC News

Contractor delivered a keynote speech at the 2020 ICA-affiliated New Media International (Virtual) Conference

2020-10-26 No Comments

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 about the conference, check out the event details here and a news article covering the conference here.

News, SONIC News

Congratulations Noshir Contractor, ICA’s newest President-Elect-Select!

2020-10-16 No Comments

Congratulations, Noshir Contractor!

We are thrilled for your election as ICA’s newest President-Elect-Select. We are excited for what’s to come and we hope the rest of your year will be filled with more happiness and exciting news.

As always, we are thankful for your leadership, hard work, and support!

See the results here: https://www.icahdq.org/page/Election2020_Results

SONIC News

Welcome to SONIC, Neelam and Aaron!

2020-10-13 No Comments

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.

Networks, SONIC News

Watch Noshir and Leslie’s Welcome Plenary at INGRoup 2020!

2020-10-09 No Comments

Last week, Professors Noshir Contractor and Leslie DeChurch presented a welcome plenary at #INGROUP2020. The talk covers some of our findings from our Enterprise Social Media (ESM) project, particularly the changes in which Covid-19 imposed on organizational communication and network ties. If you missed the talk, check out a recording of their talk here!

Thank you @INGRoupOfficial for recording the plenary!

SONIC News

New Data Science Interns this Fall!

2020-10-07 No Comments

This quarter, we have two new data science interns at the SONIC Research Group: Aida Baimenova and Piyush Kalkute. Both of them took Professor Noshir’s Social Network Analytics class in the past and have been interested in social networks ever since.

Aida Baimenova is a junior at the IEMS department. She will be working with our grad student Kyosuke on Project RED, a multi-team problem-solving exercise designed for NASA to help their effort in sending a multidisciplinary team to Mars in the next 20 years. Piyush is a graduate student pursuing Computer Science. He will be working with our Research Assistant Professor Alina and our second-year graduate student Jasmine on the Science of Team Science project that aims to understand and assemble cross-boundary teams to conduct clinical and translational science.

Head over to our Data Science Intern page here to learn a little bit more about them!

Conferences & Workshops, Networks in the News, SONIC News

Noshir and Leslie will be delivering the Welcome Plenary at INGroup 2020

2020-09-29 No Comments

We are excited to announce that our Lab Director Noshir Contractor and ATLAS’ Lab Director Leslie DeChurch will be delivering the Welcome Plenary titled “Teaming in the Time of COVID-19: Reconfiguration of Workplace Communication Networks” at the 15th Annual 2020 INGRoup Conference.

They will present their latest work on Enterprise Social Media and the effect COVID-19 has on the nature of work and teams. As many of us may have known, COVID-19 strongly affected the working force, forcing many, if not all, companies to transition to remote work. This transition, in turn, changed an organization’s communication structure and produced interesting effects.

Check out a full description of their speech here and join the livestream here. It’ll be this Thursday (Oct 1) from 10AM – 11AM EDT.