Advancing The Science of Networks in Communities
Congratulations to Anne Xie, for winning second place prize at the Undergrad Research Expo’s Social Sciences & Humanities poster session!
Under the help of Yun Huang‘s feedback, she was granted second place for her “Development of Social Relationships in Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games” poster expo.
Once again, congratulations Anne! The SONIC lab members are very proud of you!
“Toward a better scientific collaboration success prediction model through the feature space expansion” by Fahimeh Ghasemian, Kamran Zamanifar, Nasser Ghasem-Aqaee, and Noshir Contractor were published in Scientometrics. The article highlights the problem with the prediction of scientific collaboration success based on the previous collaboration of scholars using machine learning techniques is addressed in this study. As the exploitation of collaboration network is essential in collaborator discovery systems, in this article an attempt is made to understand how to exploit the information embedded in collaboration networks. We benefit the link structure among the scholars and also among the scholars and the concepts to extract set of features that are correlated with the collaboration success and increase the prediction performance. The effect of considering other aggregate methods in addition to average and maximum, for computing the collaboration features based on the feature of the members is examined as well. A dataset extracted from Northwestern University’s SciVal Expert is used for evaluating the proposed approach. The results demonstrate the capability of the proposed collaboration features in order to increase the prediction performance in combination with the widely-used features like h-index and average citation counts. Consequently, the introduced features are appropriate to incorporate in collaborator discovery systems.
You can read the publication here.
Full citation:
Ghasemian, F., Zamanifar, K., Ghasem-Aqaee, N., & Contractor, N. (2016). Toward a better scientific collaboration success prediction model through the feature space expansion. Scientometrics, (1-25). doi: 10.1007/s11192-016-1999-x
WSTNet Lab Directors got together at the start of the Web Science Conference this week in Hannover, Germany. Highlights of the meeting include the election of Steffen Staab as Chair and Pete Burnap as Vice-Chair, planning for this years’ Web Science Summer School at University of Koblenz (30 June to 6 July – #wwsss16), and firming up of arrangements for World Wide Web Week – a global event celebrating 10 years of Web Science to be held later this year.
Read the full article here.
Lab Director, Noshir Contractor, is a founding member of the Web Science Trust initiative.
Noshir Contractor and colleagues; Wei Chen, Mingxian Wang, Yun Huang and Yan Fu received an Outstanding Contribution Award for being one of ten papers that were rated in the top 5% based on reviewers’ scores. Professor Wei Chen presented the findings of the paper in a Keynote presentation at the 14th International Design Conference.
For more information on the grant that funded this project check out the following grant page.
Reference:
Wang, M., Huang, Y., Contractor, N., Fu. Y., and Chen, W., “A Network Approach for Understanding and Analyzing Product Co-consideration Relations in engineering Design”, 14th International Design Conference, May 16-19 2016, Cavtat, Dubrovnick, Croatia.
Noshir Contractor gave the keynote address at the University of Colorado, Denver’s 4th Annual Network Leadership Training Academy, titled “Building and Leveraging Powerful Social Networks”. Click here for a link to the event page.
Description:
The Network Leadership Training Academy (NLTA) is a place where network leaders gather to learn, share ideas, and develop skills for engaging in the “network way of working.” This 3-day workshop, hosted by the University of Colorado Denver’s Center on Collaborative Governance, is focused on building, managing, and evaluating effective networks. Many people today are deeply involved in the network way of working, but are struggling to find tools and a place to build skills and a community for this new way of connecting across boundaries. This interactive workshop is based on the premise that everyone involved in a network requires network leadership skills in order to be an active, effective member of a collaborative network. he agenda for the 2016 NLTA is packed full of opportunities for attendees to share and learn from each other’s experiences and skills, as well as research and tools to translate back to practice. Our keynote address on Building and Leveraging Powerful Social Networks features Dr. Noshir Contractor, Professor at Northwestern University and Director of the Science of Networks in Communities (SONIC) research center. He will share his work on investigating factors that lead to the formation, maintenance, and dissolution of dynamically linked social and knowledge networks in a wide variety of contexts. Large group sessions will be led by NLTA core trainers who are recognized for their contributions to network science research. Session topics include: · Managing Networks, Brint Milward, Ph.D, University of Arizona · Network Way of Working: Building a Network Culture, Janice Popp, MSW, RSW, University of Calgary · Affective Contagion in Networks: Evaluating Process Quality, Darrin Hicks, PhD, University of Denver · Evaluating Networks as Systems, Danielle Varda, PhD, University of Colorado Denver Other session topics include: Networks 101, Using PARTNER’s Social Network Analysis Tool to Evaluate your Networks, Networks as Policy Tools: “Network Nuggets” from Research and Practice, Facilitation Skills, Conflict Training, and Collective Impact.
Noshir Contractor along with collaborators Suzanne Bell (DePaul University) and Leslie DeChurch (currently at Georgia Tech, but soon to be at Northwestern University) have received another grant from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in order to study the relationship between composition, interpersonal relations, and team effectiveness in space crews. This project will be jointly conducted with researchers at Institute of Biomedical Problems, whose research informs operations for the Russian Federal Space Agency. In this US-Russian collaboration, researchers will utilize data previously collected in the Mars 105 and Mars 500 simulations; collect new data using analog-definition research in the 2017 and 2018 Human Exploration Research Analog (HERA) campaigns; and use a novel combination of text mining, relational event modeling, and coevolution statistical modeling.
For more information on this exciting new project, click here.
This is the second collaborative NASA grant among Prof. Contractor, Prof. DeChurch, and Prof. Bell; the first being CREWS: Crew Recommender for Effective Work in Space. This is also the fourth NASA grant the SONIC Lab has received in the past two years. Be sure to check out our work on the other two grants: SCALE and INERTIA!
SONIC PhD student Jackie Ng took home the gold in the Northwestern University Computational Research Day Visualization Challenge for her presentation on Nebula, an innovative new tool that uses network science to visualize discussion board threads. For winning first place, Jackie received an NVIDIA GeForce Titan X graphics card which retails for over $1,000!
Congratulations Jackie!
El acceso a grandes volúmenes de información sobre los fenómenos sociales en general y sobre la red en particular tiene un valor extraordinario para los científicos sociales. Pero esta apasionante oportunidad debe estar acompañada de la reflexión sobre cómo los big data pueden dar lugar a nuevas teorías y métodos. Utilizando ejemplos de su investigación en el área de redes, Contractor analizará el aporte de la Ciencia de Redes al desarrollo de nuevas comprensiones a partir de grandes volúmenes de datos. Más importante aún, ilustrará cómo estas ideas ofrecen a los científicos sociales y los estudiosos de redes sociales, una oportunidad sin precedentes para participar más activamente en la supervisión, la anticipación y el diseño de intervenciones para hacer frente a los grandes desafíos sociales. – See more at: http://citep.rec.uba.ar/blog/2016/04/20/2398/#sthash.b8XUhK7X.dpuf
La conferencia se realizará el miércoles 27 de abril a las 18 hs. en Pte. J. E. Uriburu 950, entrepiso.
No se requiere inscripción previa para participar de la actividad.
Para más información, ingresar en: http://programasiglo21.rec.uba.ar
SONIC JD/PhD candidate Ryan Whalen, along with coauthors Yun Huang (senior research associate at SONIC), Craig Tanis, Anup Sawant (senior software developer at SONIC), Brian Uzzi (SONIC affiliated faculty) and Noshir Contractor (SONIC lab director) recently published an article titled “Citation Distance: Measuring Changes in Scientific Search Strategies” in the Proceedings of the 25th International Conference Companion on World Wide Web.
Abstract:
Using latent semantic analysis on the full text of scientific articles, we measure the distance between 36 million citing/cited article pairs and chart changes in citation proximity over time. The analysis shows that the mean distance between citing and cited articles has steadily increased since 1990. This demonstrates that current scholars are more likely to cite distantly related research than their peers of 20 years ago who tended to cite more proximate work. These changes coincide with the introduction of new information technologies like the Internet, and the increasing popularity of interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research. The “citation distance” measure shows promise in improving our understanding of the evolution of knowledge. It also offers a method to add nuance to scholarly impact measures by assessing the extent to which an article influences proximate or distant future work.
Read the full article here.
Lab Director Noshir Contractor, IEMS Professor Seyed Iravani, and SONIC PhD candidate Jackie Ng were recently awarded a unique grant from Northwestern University’s Office of the Provost and Faculty Distance Learning Workshop. Their project titled “Fostering Effective Online Discussion in Higher Education With ‘Nebula’, a Graphical Interface for Discussion Boards” was one of only nine projects to receive funding as part of an initiative to increase Northwestern’s visibility in digital and online teaching environments.
For more information on this project check out the Nebula grant page.
Click here to read a news story featuring Nebula.
Click here to read a news story featuring all of the winning proposals.
