Events
Past Event
WED@NICO SEMINAR: Ágnes Horvát, Northwestern University "Early Signals for the Wisdom of Crowds in Crowdfunding"
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
12:00 PM
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Lower Level, Chambers Hall
Details
Speaker:
Ágnes Horvát, Assistant Professor, School of Communications, Northwestern University
Title:
Early Signals for the Wisdom of Crowds in Crowdfunding
Abstract:
Crowds have been argued to possess transformative collective intelligence benefits that allow superior decision-making by untrained individuals working in low-information environments. Classic wisdom of crowds theories are based on the study of large groups of diverse and independent decision-makers. Yet, most human decisions are reached in arrangements that violate these criteria. This observation puts forth a key question: Are there new expressions of collective intelligence that enable better outcomes? In this talk, we explore whether crowds furnish collective intelligence benefits in crowdfunding systems. Crowdfunding has grown and diversified quickly over the past couple of years expanding from funding aspirant creative works and supplying pro-social donations to enabling large citizen-funded urban projects and providing commercial interest-based unsecured loans. In the latter setting we find evidence for collective intelligence signals in financing: Opinion diversity, herding patterns, and information aggregation speed predict who gets funded and who repays even after accounting for traditional measures of creditworthiness and differences in the novelty of projects. Most importantly, crowds work well in correctly assessing the outcome of high risk projects. Furthermore, collective intelligence indicators serve as early warning signals when inferring success based solely on the initial part of the crowdfunding campaign. These findings broaden on the one hand the field of crowd-aware system design and inform discussions about the augmentation of traditional financing systems with tech innovations. On the other hand, they contribute to the growing literature on the wisdom of crowds.
Speaker Bio:
Ágnes Horvát is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Northwestern University. She is also an affiliated faculty of the Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO) and the Department of Management and Organizations of the Kellogg School of Management (by courtesy). Her current research focuses on measuring and forecast the collective behavior of interconnected crowds in peer-to-peer platforms. She develops empirical and theoretical methods to identify expressions of collective intelligence and opportunities for innovation in crowdsourcing communities, detect shared misconceptions and biases in online capital markets, as well as support creativity and predict success in creative industries. Horvát has been the recipient of many fellowships and academic excellence awards, most recently a CISE CRII award from the National Science Foundation.
Live Stream:
Time
Wednesday, October 31, 2018 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Location
Lower Level, Chambers Hall Map
Contact
Calendar
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
WED@NICO SEMINAR: Hamsa Bastani, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania "Challenges in Achieving Human-AI Collaboration"
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
12:00 PM
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Lower Level, Chambers Hall
Details
Speaker:
Hamsa Bastani, Associate Professor of Operations, Information, and Decisions, and Statistics and Data Science, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
Title:
Challenges in Achieving Human-AI Collaboration
Abstract:
TBA
Speaker Bio:
Hamsa Sridhar Bastani is an Associate Professor of Operations, Information, and Decisions (OID) and Statistics and Data Science at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where she co-direct the Wharton Healthcare Analytics Lab. Her research sits at the intersection of machine learning, operations research, and economics. She studies how to design, deploy, and evaluate AI systems that empower human decision-makers and improve societal outcomes.
Professor Bastani aims to combine methodological depth with implementation in consequential environments. She has worked with national governments to deploy algorithms at the country scale for targeted border COVID-19 screening and essential medicine access, and has co-led one of the first large field studies of generative AI tutors in high school mathematics. She studies both the mathematical properties of algorithms and the way people respond to them.
Her research has been published in leading outlets including Nature, Management Science, Operations Research, and PNAS, and has garnered numerous recognitions, including the Wagner Prize for Excellence in Operations Research, the INFORMS Pierskalla Award for best healthcare paper, and the George Nicholson Prize. Previously, she graduated summa cum laude from Harvard in 2012 with an A.M. in physics and an A.B. in physics and mathematics, completed her PhD in Stanford's Electrical Engineering department under the supervision of Mohsen Bayati, and spent a year as a Herman Goldstine postdoctoral fellow at IBM Research.
Location:
In person: Chambers Hall, 600 Foster Street, Lower Level
Remote option: https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/99847338986
About the Speaker Series:
Wednesdays@NICO is a vibrant weekly seminar series focusing broadly on the topics of complex systems, networks, and artificial intelligence. 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 13, 2026 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 with NU Scholars!
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
12:00 PM
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Lower Level, Chambers Hall
Details
May 20th Speakers:
Yulin Yu, Postdoctoral Fellow, Kellogg School of Management
Feihong Xu, PhD Candidate, McCormick School of Engineering
Maalvika Bhat, PhD Student, School of Communication
Rochana Chaturvedi, Postdoctoral Fellow, Kellogg School of Management
NICO Lightning talks are open to Northwestern graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and visiting scholars! If you are interested in signing up for a future session, please fill out this short survey.
Location:
In person: Chambers Hall, 600 Foster Street, Lower Level
Remote option: https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/98031689779
About the Speaker Series:
Wednesdays@NICO is a vibrant weekly seminar series focusing broadly on the topics of complex systems, networks, and artificial intelligence. 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 20, 2026 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Location
Lower Level, Chambers Hall Map
Contact
Calendar
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)