Events
Past Event
CANCELLED - POSTPONED: WED@NICO SEMINAR: Jana Diesner, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
12:00 PM
//
Lower Level Chambers Hall
Details
*****
Due to unforeseen circumstances this talk is POSTPONED. We apologize for the inconvenience and will reschedule at a later date.
*****
Title:
Impact Assessment of Information Products and Data Provenance
Speaker:
Jana Diesner - Assistant Professor, School of Information Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Talk Abstract:
The emerging field of human-centered data science has led to several transformative advances in research and technology: With groups of people generating digital data, some social effects can be measured instead of having to be estimated. Also, the availability of such data may allow us to listen to peoples' signals instead of having to ask them questions. Finally, both the structure and content of human interactions can be considered for data analysis, and applying mixed methods to such data is becoming a routine approach.
These advances have broadened the scope in possibilities in impact assessment research, among other fields. I present our work on developing new computational solutions for identifying the impact of information products on people by leveraging theories from linguistics and the social sciences as well as methods from natural language processing and machine learning. I focus on a study where we developed and evaluated a theoretically grounded categorization schema, codebook, corpus annotation, and prediction model for detecting multiple practically relevant types of impact that documentary films can have on individuals, such as change versus reaffirmation of people's behavior, cognition, and emotions. This work uses reviews as a form of user-generated content. We use linguistic, lexical, and psychological features for supervised learning; achieving an accuracy rate of about 81% (F1).
The outlined advances also imply several challenges: Verifying the accuracy of large-scale data is crucial for enabling collaborations, sharing data, and generating reliable results, but is challenging if the data provenance process lacks transparency. While choices about data collection, preparation and analysis are increasingly embedded in datasets and technologies, we still have a poor understanding of the impact of these decisions on research results and further actions. I present on our work on entity resolution of social network data, highlight the impact of common strategies and shortcomings on node and graph level properties, and discuss implications of biased results for decision and policy making.
Live Stream:
To join the Meeting: bluejeans.com/8474912527
To join via Browser: bluejeans.com/8474912527/browser
Time
Wednesday, April 26, 2017 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Location
Lower Level Chambers Hall Map
Contact
Calendar
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
WED@NICO SEMINAR: Lightning Talks w/ Northwestern Scholars!
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
12:00 PM
//
Lower Level, Chambers Hall
Details
Speakers:
Yessica Herrera, Visiting Scholar, Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems
Talk Title: The Body Speaks: Visual Patterns of Psychological Stress
Aakriti Kumar, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems
Talk Title: Evaluating Elements of Empathic Communication with Experts, Crowds, and Large Language Models
Tingyu "Mark" Zhao, PhD Student, Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences
Talk Title: Noise Filtering in Complex Networks
Sign Up:
Sign up to present at a future Lightning Talk session. NICO Lightning Talks are open to graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and visiting scholars.
Location:
In person: Chambers Hall, 600 Foster Street, Lower Level
Remote option: https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/95387714084
Passcode: NICO25
About the Speaker Series:
Wednesdays@NICO is a vibrant weekly seminar series focusing broadly on the topics of complex systems, data science and network science. It brings together attendees ranging from graduate students to senior faculty who span all of the schools across Northwestern, from applied math to sociology to biology and every discipline in-between. Please visit: https://bit.ly/WedatNICO for information on future speakers.
Time
Wednesday, May 14, 2025 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Location
Lower Level, Chambers Hall Map
Contact
Calendar
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
WED@NICO SEMINAR: Rosemary Braun, Northwestern University "The Scale of Life"
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
12:00 PM
//
Lower Level, Chambers Hall
Details
Speaker:
Rosemary Braun, Associate Professor, Department of Molecular Biosciences, Northwestern University
Title:
The Scale of Life
Abstract:
Living systems exhibit surprising and beautiful self-organization at all scales. At the atomic level, proteins self-assemble into macromolecular complexes. The function of these machines is orchestrated within the cell by regulatory networks, whose activity is in turn dictated by, and coordinated with, the cells environment. This coordination takes place across large spans of space and time: the size and lifetime of organisms as large as the blue whale. Populations and ecosystems of many organisms in turn exhibit remarkable emergent dynamics. Today, advances in single-cell assays enable us to probe the molecular state of every cell in a sample in high-dimensional detail. But is this the correct scale at which to probe living systems? What can we learn from this data, and how can we abstract from the microscopic details to macroscopic phenotypes? In this talk, I will discuss some of our recent work bridging the cell and tissue/organism scales, and discuss some challenges and opportunities for the future.
Speaker Bio:
Rosemary Braun is an Associate Professor of Molecular Biosciences, Applied Mathematics [ESAM], and Physics at Northwestern University. A theoretical physicist by training, she earned her PhD in Physics from the University of Illinois, followed by a Masters in Biostatistics from Johns Hopkins University. She completed her postdoctoral training at the National Cancer Institute (NIH) before joining Northwestern as a faculty member. Today, she works at the intersection of statistics, mathematics, and biology to develop computational tools for analyzing high-dimensional data. In addition to her Northwestern affiliations, she is also Associate Director of the National Institute for Theory and Mathematics in Biology, as well as external faculty of the Santa Fe Institute.
Location:
In person: Chambers Hall, 600 Foster Street, Lower Level
Remote option: https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/97015976754
Passcode: NICO25
About the Speaker Series:
Wednesdays@NICO is a vibrant weekly seminar series focusing broadly on the topics of complex systems, data science and network science. It brings together attendees ranging from graduate students to senior faculty who span all of the schools across Northwestern, from applied math to sociology to biology and every discipline in-between. Please visit: https://bit.ly/WedatNICO for information on future speakers.
Time
Wednesday, May 21, 2025 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Location
Lower Level, Chambers Hall Map
Contact
Calendar
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)