Watch Balazs Vedres entire Speaker Series talk “Escaping Network Gravity” below or on SONIC’s YouTube channel.
The Video of SONIC Speaker Series Talk by Balazs Vedres now up on YouTube!
Brooke Foucault-Welles and Noshir Contractor Receive Article of the Year Award for “Dynamic Models of Communication in an Online Friendship Network”
Each summer, the editorial board of Communication Methods and Measures, the official journal for the Communication Theory and Methodology Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), nominates what they consider to be the three best articles published in the prior year. The executive board of CTM then chooses the winner of the Article of the Year Award from those three.
We are proud to announce that former SONIC graduate student, Brooke Foucault-Welles received the Article of the Year Award for her paper “Dynamic Models of Communication in an Online Friendship Network,” coauthored by Tony Vashevko, Nick Bennett and Noshir Contractor. Bennett was previously a SONIC research technologist and Vashevko was a SONIC research associate. This prestigious award will be presented at the AEJMC Annual Conference in San Francisco, California.
Click here for more information about the conference.
Click here to read the winning article.
The video of Prasad Balkundi’s SONIC Speaker Series talk is now available on our YouTube Page!
Read about Prasad Balkundi’s talk from May 7th, 2015 and watch the full presentation below on SONIC’s YouTube Channel.
Strong vesus weak: A meta-analysis of tie strength and individual effectiveness
Eric Forbush Uses NetLogo to Plan for the First Mission to Mars
Eric Forbush was featured in the McCormick School of Engineering’s news for his work using NetLogo to model how astronauts on the mission to Mars would switch tasks mid-mission.
Read more about Eric’s work here.
Noshir Contractor Delivers Speech at Internet Science Conference
At the 2nd International Conference on Internet Science in Brussels, Belgium on May 28th, Noshir Contractor delivered a speech titled “Leveraging WINS (Web/Internet/Network Science) to Address Societal Challenges”. Noshir was a keynote speaker along with Marietje Schaake, Christian de Larrinaga, Andrea M. Matwyshyn, Marcelo Thompson, and Motohiro Tsuchiya.
Learn more about the 2nd International Conference on Internet Science
Noshir Contractor Honored as International Communication Association (ICA) Fellow
The International Communication Association inducted Professor Noshir Contractor as a Fellow at the annual ICA conference held in San Juan, Puerto Rico on May 21-25, 2015. The inducting committee had the following to say about Prof Contractor:
“Noshir Contractor is recognized for his stellar work on communication networks and organizational communication, and for his path-breaking research in computational social science, communication information systems, and multi-level network modeling. His co-authored book Theories of Communication Networks is by far the most comprehensive and significant theoretical treatise on communication networks. He is one of the few scholars in our discipline to have published in the prestigious journal Science and in the coveted Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. He is the foremost scholar in multi-method, multi-level network modeling and has become a national and international leader in applying network analysis to broad-scale social problems. This intellectual leadership extends to policy arenas through his work on emergency response systems, science teams, sustainable development, cyberinfrastructure, and knowledge networks. He has produced a corpus of scholarship that has carved new terrains, captured the attention of researchers inside and outside the field, and garnered an outstanding record of external funding.”
Learn more about ICA Fellows
SONIC Lab Multimedia Production
SONIC Lab Multimedia Production
Application Period: May 4th to June 8th
Duration: Approximately 130-195 hours between June 1st and August 30th
Compensation: $10-14 hourly
Contact: Meghan McCarter, Recruitment and Outreach Coordinator
Contact Email: m-mccarter@northwestern.edu
Contact Phone: (636) 284-5218
Location: SONIC Lab, Frances Searle Building 1-459, 2240 Campus Dr, Evanston, IL 60201
Organization Overview:
The Science of Networks in Communities (SONIC) research group advances social network theories, methods, and tools to better understand and meet the needs of diverse communities. SONIC develops cutting-edge techniques to study and improve social and knowledge networks in distributed working groups, online communities, virtual teams, and other large communities.
For more information, please visit our website.
Internship Description:
The Multimedia Production Intern will support all of SONIC Labs media need including:
- Web-ready video production
- Photography and graphic design
- Creating all other media promoting the lab’s research or events
Required Qualifications:
This position is open to undergraduates or recent graduates enrolled who are eligible to work in the United States. Applicants over the age of 18 will be required to pass a background check. Candidates must be able to demonstrate:
- Experience in video/photo production and editing
- Strong communication skills
- The ability collaborate on evolving projects while maintaining attention to detail
- The willingness to learn new tools and skills.
Preferred Qualifications:
The ideal candidate has experience with one or more of the following:
- Adobe Suite video/photo editing software (Premiere, Photoshop, Audition, Illustrator, Flash, AfterEffects)
- Journalistic writing
Application Instructions:
To apply please upload a resume, cover letter, and three references to the m-mccarter@northwestern.edu.
What we’re reading – and how it ties us together
Michael Levy of the Center for Environmental Policy and Behavior at UC Davis created a bipartite network of using his coworkers and their preferred journals to illustrate the functional clusters within the highly interdisciplinary lab. He then converted the visualization into a single mode network using ggnet – a ggplot implementation (via the GGally package) and calculated degree, betweenness, and eigenvector centrality for each journal for a more detailed picture of the overlapping interests within his community. He provides his r code for anyone who wants to apply try the excersize with their own lab.
Check out Michael Levy’s blog to read more and play with his code : http://environmentalpolicy.ucdavis.edu/blog/2015/03/386
SONIC Research Practices High School Internship
SONIC Research Practices High School Internship
Application Period: May 14th to June 8th, 2015
Duration: Approximately 120 hours between June 8th and August 28th
Compensation: $9-12 hourly
Contact: Meghan McCarter, Recruitment and Outreach Coordinator
Contact Email: m-mccarter@northwester.edu
Contact Phone: (636) 284-5218
Location: SONIC Lab, Frances Searle Building 1-459, 2240 Campus Dr, Evanston, IL 60201
Organization Overview:
The Science of Networks in Communities (SONIC) research group advances social network theory, and methodology through the development of cutting-edge techniques to study and improve knowledge networks in distributed working groups, virtual teams, and other large communities. For more information, please visit our website.
Project Description:
The MTS (Multi-Team System) Groupscope Project is an ongoing study of collaborative behavior. The goal of this study is to understand and improve upon the mechanism by which diverse groups coordinate to achieve a common goal.
Internship Description:
The MTS Research Aid will assist graduate researchers on an array of projects by:
- proctoring data collection
- extracting and storing data
- organizing and processing data for analysis
Required Qualifications:
This position is open to rising high school seniors or recent graduates enrolled in an accredited degree-seeking program who are eligible to work in the United States. Applicants over the age of 18 will be required to pass a background check. Candidates must demonstrate:
- keen written and verbal communication skills,
- fastidious organization and attention to detail
- the ability to and work collaboratively
Preferred Qualifications:
The ideal candidate possesses:
- confidence addressing a large group
- familiarity with Microsoft Office Suite
- experience with statistics, data manipulation and research/independent projects
Application Instructions:
To apply please upload your resume, cover letter, and three references to m-mccarter@northwestern.edu
Noshir Contractor Serves as Keynote Speaker at ARS 2015 Workshop
At the ARS 2015 in Anacapri, Italy on April 29th, Noshir Contractor was the keynote speaker for the Large Networks and Big Data Workshop. His speech was titled “Leveraging Network Science to Address Great Societal Challenges”. Topics included how network science is the solution to making sense of big data and monitoring and anticipating global problems to design effective solutions.
Learn more about ARS 2015 or Noshir’s speech