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.

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.

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.

Congratulations to the Winter 2016 Data Science Interns! Thanks for your hard work this quarter and for your thoughtful final presentations. We look forward to seeing many of you again next quarter and wish you all the very best in your future endeavors!

Data Science Intern, Rachel Li was awarded a grant by the Northwestern University Office of Undergraduate Research to help conduct research on behalf of SONIC Lab through the Network Sciences Collaborative Technology Alliance at the United States Military Academy this spring. Rachel is involved in data preparation and analyses for publications based on the MTS Experiment. This grant will build on her work in this project.

Academic Year URGs provide up to $1,000 to pay for your research expenses to do an independent academic or creative project in any field. You can read more bout the URG Program HERE.

Lab Director, Noshir Contractor, co-organized the Designing Online Experiments: Citizen Science Approaches to Research Workshop at the 19th Annual Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing Conference in San Francisco on February 27th, 2016

Full Citation:
Co-organizer, Designing Online Experiments: Citizen Science Approaches to Research Workshop at the 19th Annual Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW) Conference, February 27, 2016, San Francisco, CA.

Event Website:
https://cscw.acm.org/2016/index.php

Lab Director, Noshir Contractor, presented on a panel titled Issues of Social Media and Social Networks for the Communication of Science Related to Contentious Societal Issues at the National Academies of Science’s Committee on the Science of Science Communication: A Research Agenda in Washington DC on February 24th, 2016.

Full Citation:
Contractor, N (February, 2016). Presented on a panel titled Issues of Social Media and Social Networks for the Communication of Science Related to Contentious Societal Issues at the National Academies of Science’s Committee on the Science of Science Communication: A Research Agenda, Washington DC.

Event Website:
http://www8.nationalacademies.org/cp/meetingview.aspx?MeetingId=8435

Lab Director, Noshir Contractor delivered a talk entitled “Team Science for the 21st Century” as an invited speaker at the 3rd Kavli Symposium on Science Journalism in Washington DC on February 15th, 2016.

Full Citation:
Contractor, N. (February 15, 2016). Team Science for the 21st Century. Evening Speaker, 3rd Kavli Symposium on Science Journalism, Washington, DC.

Event Website:
http://wfsj.org/v2/kavli-symposium/

On February 23r, 2016, Charles “Chick” Macal visited SONIC Lab to present “Simulating Chicago (and Everyone in It)” as part of the SONIC Speaker Series. Dr. Macal’s full abstract and presentation can be viewed below.

Abstract:

chiSIM, the Chicago Social Interaction Model, is an agent-based model of people and places in Chicago along with the daily activities in which residents engage. To support planning and policy making, chiSIM models the behaviors and social interactions of all Chicago residents, represented in the model at the individual level. Places consist of geo-located parcels in the city, such as households, schools, workplaces, hospitals, and general quarters, such as nursing homes, dormitories, jails, etc. During the course of a simulated day, agents move from place to place, hour by hour, engaging in social activities and interactions with co-located agents. Examples of applications for this model include forecasting socially mediated processes, such as the spread of infectious diseases and the adoption of new technologies; measuring the potential effectiveness of public health and social programs and interventions; and assessing population-wide energy usage.

Full talk with presentation slides: