Alexandros successfully defends his dissertation titled “Essays in Machine Learning, Social Networks and Marketing”.  He designed novel distributed optimization algorithms and investigated problems that lie at the interface of social networks, and marketing, with an emphasis on customer retention and new product adoption. His committee consisted of Noshir Contractor, Diego Klabjan, and Brian Uzzi.

Jackie successfully defended her dissertation titled “Teams and Organizing in the Digital Age:  How Team Networks Form and Why They Perform”.  Her research explores the relationship between how teams form and what they need to perform, highlighting a paradox between what teams do and what they ought to do.  Her committee consisted of Noshir Contractor (Chair), Jeanne Brett, Leslie DeChurch, Seyed Iravani, and Brian Uzzi.

Despite a resurgence of research on negative ties in social networks, a comprehensive understanding of negative and positive has yet to be provided. Incorporating evidence from prior 163 independent samples we examine whether the initiation of positive and negative relationships (i.e., out-degree) or the reception of positive and negative relationships (i.e., in-degree) is more impactful to the focal employee’s effectiveness. Furthermore, to address the negative asymmetry hypothesis in social networks, we compare the relative importance of positive versus negative work relationships while holding the directionality constant. This meta-analytic review makes five contributions to theory on negative and positive social networks by (a) demonstrating the undermining impact of negative ties on performance and job attitudes; (b) providing information on the negative asymmetry hypothesis within social networks to reveal that negative ties occur less frequently than positive ties and that any asymmetry effects depend on the relative number of negative ties to positive ties in the context; (d) distinguishing between haters (senders of negative ties) and jerks (receivers of negative ties) to illustrate that haters have worse job attitudes than jerks, but the two do not differ on performance; and (e) providing positive and negative affect as antecedents to negative ties. Implications of these findings along with study limitations and future research directions are discussed.​

The full video of Prasad’s presentation can be found here.

Koustav Rudra joins SONIC as a post-doctoral researcher, following completion of his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. He will contribute his text analytic skills to various projects at SONIC.

On April 25th 2018, Noshir Contractor participated in ceremonies to induct IIT Madras’ Robert Bosch Center for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence as the first member of the Web Science Trust Network (WSTNet) of laboratories from India. https://rbc-dsai.iitm.ac.in/events/2018/04/25/Launch-Webscience-trust-network.html

Noshir Contractor received a Distinguished Alumnus Award from  the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras,  where he received his undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering in 1983. He received the award during IITM’s 59th Institute Day ceremonies held on April 26th, 2018. http://alumni.iitm.ac.in/daa/list.php?yr=2018

Are we really going to Mars? The astronautical community certainly believes the answer is “yes.” Scientists all over the world are solving puzzles related to rocket reusability, human resistance to radiation exposure, and terraforming Mars to warm it up and give it a breathable atmosphere. The scientific challenges of a Mars mission are not confined to physical science and engineering. Once the rockets are built and tested, we will ultimately be sending human teams off to explore the galaxy. A central mission parameter for deep space exploration is teamwork. Communication Studies Professors Leslie DeChurch and Noshir Contractor are working with NASA to assemble and support inter-planetary dream teams. In this session, we will share the current plans for space travel and colonization, provide a behind the scenes look at how we are designing teams, and help you design dream teams back on Earth.

SONIC members present various projects throughout SIOP 2018: