Speaker:

Sune Lehmann, Professor of Networks and Complexity Science, DTU Compute, Technical University of Denmark

Title:

Modeling temporal communications networks

Abstract:

TBA

Speaker Bio:

Sune Lehmann is a Professor of Networks and Complexity Science at DTU Compute, Technical University of Denmark. He is also a Professor of Social Data Science at the Center for Social Data Science (SODAS), University of Copenhagen. His work focuses on quantitative understanding of social systems based on massive data sets. A physicist by training, his research draws on approaches from the physics of complex systems, machine learning, and statistical analysis. Professor Lehmann works on large-scale behavioral data and while his primary focus is on modeling complex networks, his research has made substantial contributions on topics such as human mobility, sleep, academic performance, complex contagion, epidemic spreading, and behavior on twitter.

Webinar:

https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/93842011581
Passcode: NICO2022

About the Speaker Series:

Wednesdays@NICO is a vibrant weekly seminar series focusing broadly on the topics of complex systems and data 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.

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JANUARY MEETING: Wednesday, January 26, 2022 at 5:15pm (US Central) via Zoom.

DATA SCIENCE NIGHTS are monthly talks on data science techniques or applications, organized by Northwestern University graduate students and scholars. Aspiring, beginning, and advanced data scientists are welcome!

AGENDA:

5:15: Data Science Night Meet & Greet on Zoom: https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/97300898035
5:30: Presentation by Qian Cao on Zoom
6:00: Post-talk coding on Gather Town

SPEAKER: Qian Cao, Visiting Scientist, U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

TITLE: Turning a bone imaging research project into a job at the FDA

ABSTRACT: 1 in 5 American women over age 50 has osteoporosis, which increases the risk of bone fracture and can lead to hospitalizations and premature death in older people. Assessment of bone fragility is a key part of staging and management of osteoporosis. Bone mineral density (BMD) is commonly used for evaluating fracture risk and can be measured by quantitative computed tomography (CT) or dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry (DXA). However, bone fragility also depends on both mineral distribution and microstructure. Therefore, recent efforts have emphasized characterization of bone microarchitecture (or bone texture) as a basis for more reliable estimates of fragility and disease progression. I will briefly discuss my research in measurement of bone microstructure and development of texture biomarkers in CT. I will also discuss my experience as a research fellow at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

BIO: Qian Cao is a Visiting Scientist at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) where he works on projects involving assessment of bone health. He completed his PhD in 2020 in the Dept of Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, where he developed new 3D imaging and reconstruction methods to visualize bone at higher resolution, as well as new analysis methods. Following graduation, he worked at the FDA for almost a year as a research fellow on developing texture biomarkers for the assessment of bone health.

For more info: data-science-nights.org

Supporting Groups:

This event is supported by the Northwestern Institute for Complex Systems and the Northwestern Data Science Initiative.

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Description:

NICO is hosting another round of research lightning talks as a part of our Wednesdays @ NICO seminar series. This winter Lightning Talks will be held on February 2, 2022 via a Zoom webinar, with another session in either April or May 2022 (TBD).

Open to Northwestern graduate student or postdoctoral fellows! If you are interested in giving a lightning talk (~10 minutes with questions) to the broader NICO audience, please sign up here: https://bit.ly/nico-lightning

Speakers will be balanced based on their topics/disciplines in order to provide a broad representation of the research activities at NICO.

Webinar:

Webinar link: https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/94393609745
Passcode: NICO2022

Speakers:

TBA

Talk Titles and Abstracts:

TBA

About the Speaker Series:

Wednesdays@NICO is a vibrant weekly seminar series focusing broadly on the topics of complex systems and data 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.

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Speaker:

Fabiana Zollo, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Environmental Sciences, Informatics and Statistics, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice

Title:

Polarization, Misinformation, and Hate: Investigating Social Dynamics with Online Data

Abstract:

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the challenge of conveying and communicating complexity and uncertainty to the public, also given the increasing central role of the Internet and social media. Designed to maximise users' presence on the platform and to deliver targeted advertising, social media transformed the information landscape and have rapidly become the main information sources for many of their users. Information spreads faster and farther online, in a flow-through system where users have immediate access to unlimited content. This may facilitate the proliferation of mis- and dis-information, generating chaos, and limiting access to correct information. In this talk, I will provide an overview of how social dynamics and behavioural patterns can be investigated and analysed with online data, and discuss how data-driven insights can be used to design effective strategies to counter misinformation and improve the overall quality of the information system.

Speaker Bio:

Fabiana Zollo is an Assistant Professor in the Dept. of Environmental Sciences, Informatics and Statistics and Research Fellow in the Center for the Humanities & Social Change at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. Her research investigates information and misinformation spreading, social dynamics, and the emergence of collective narratives on online social media. She collected several papers on this topic, with both national and International co-authors. Since 2019, she is serving as an External Expert to the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). She is a member of the Task Force “Data Science” established by AGCOM, the Italian Communications Regulatory Authority, and a member of the Working Group established by the Italian Presidency of Council to study the phenomenon of disinformation on COVID-19.

Webinar:

https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/92493487525
Passcode: NICO2022

About the Speaker Series:

Wednesdays@NICO is a vibrant weekly seminar series focusing broadly on the topics of complex systems and data 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.

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Speaker:

Mercedes Pascual, Professor, Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Chicago

Title:

TBA

Abstract:

TBA

Speaker Bio:

Mercedes Pascual is a theoretical ecologist interested in the temporal and spatio-temporal dynamics of ecological systems, from populations experiencing the spread of pathogens to large communities of interacting species in ecosystems. With an itinerant undergraduate and graduate trajectory that took her back and forth between biology and mathematics, she is deeply interested in the intersection of numbers and nature. Professor Pascual studies ‘complex systems’ in Ecology and Epidemiology, to understand and predict patterns of variability and their connection to structure and scale. Biological systems in general with their diversity and interactions at different levels of organization represent this century’s challenge for quantitative approaches, including dynamical modeling, statistical inference and informatics. Ecological systems, including the Ecology and Evolution of infectious diseases, pose some of the most urgent and challenging problems today.

Webinar:

https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/95743710812
Passcode: NICO2022

About the Speaker Series:

Wednesdays@NICO is a vibrant weekly seminar series focusing broadly on the topics of complex systems and data 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.

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Speaker:

Staša Milojević, Associate Professor, Department of Informatics, Indiana University, Bloomington

Title:

Capturing Tectonic Shifts in Contemporary Science

Abstract:

TBA

Speaker Bio:

Staša Milojević is an Associate Professor in the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, the director of Center for Complex Networks and Systems Research, a core faculty of Cognitive Science program, and a fellow of Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics at Indiana University, Bloomington.

Her research endeavors to elucidate the dynamics of science as a social and an intellectual (cognitive) endeavor by approaching science as a heterogeneous system comprising of people, ideas, documents, instruments, institutions, and policies situated in an historical context. Specifically, she strives to produce comprehensive, yet straightforward models based on theoretical and empirical findings from a wide range of fields (science, technology, and society (STS), science of science, information science, network science, economics, sociology, philosophy, history, etc.) in order to uncover and explain the fundamental principles that govern contemporary science.

Webinar:

https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/98776071017
Passcode: NICO2022

About the Speaker Series:

Wednesdays@NICO is a vibrant weekly seminar series focusing broadly on the topics of complex systems and data 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.

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Speaker:

Filipa Rijo-Ferreira, Assistant Professor of Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology, University of California Berkeley

Title:

Circadian rhythms in parasitic infections

Abstract:

TBA

Speaker Bio:

Filipa Rijo-Ferreira is an Assistant Professor of Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology at University of California, Berkeley who studies circadian rhythms in parasitic diseases such as sleeping sickness and malaria. Our rhythmic world has been a driving force for organisms to evolve a molecular clock to anticipate such daily rhythms. Similarly, our own circadian biology leads to physiological rhythms that parasites experience. Professor Rijo-Ferreira's research seeks to understand how circadian rhythms modulate host-parasite-vector interactions and identify opportunities in their rhythmic biology to treat parasitic infections.

Webinar:

https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/94626423034
Passcode: NICO2022

About the Speaker Series:

Wednesdays@NICO is a vibrant weekly seminar series focusing broadly on the topics of complex systems and data 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.

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Speaker:

Fabián Bustamante - Professor, Department of Computer Science, Northwestern University

Title:

Networked Systems as Witnesses - Content Demand, Human Mobility and an Infection Spread

Abstract:

While non-pharmaceutical interventions such as stay-at-home, shelter-in-place, and school closures are considered the most effective ways to limit the spread of infectious diseases, their use is generally controversial given the political, ethical, and socioeconomic issues they raise. Part of the challenge is the non-obvious link between the level of compliance with such measures and their effectiveness. In this talk, I will present some recent work arguing that users' demand on networked services can serve as a proxy for the social distancing behavior of communities, offering a new approach evaluating these measures' effectiveness. For this study, we leverage the vantage point of one of the largest worldwide content distribution networks (CDNs) together with publicly-available datasets of mobile users' behavior, to examine the relationship between changes in user demand on the CDN and different interventions including stay-at-home/shelter-in-place, mask mandates, and school closures. As networked systems become integral parts of our everyday lives, they can act as witnesses of our individual and collective actions. Our study illustrates the potential value of this new role.

Speaker Bio:

Fabián E. Bustamante is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Northwestern University and Director of Research at Phenix RTS, a Chicago startup focused on real-time streaming. He is a senior member of the IEEE and ACM and has received a number of recognitions for his work, including the National Science Foundation CAREER Award, multiple Google Faculty Awards and the Science Foundation of Ireland E.T.S. Walton Visitor Award. Fabián’s research falls largely in the area of computer networks and distributed systems, with an emphasis on characterizing large-scale systems from the perspective of end users and designing new and improved systems based on the gain insights. Much of his recent work is focused on characterizing the criticality of networked systems, from the global submarine cable network to the web, and the challenges they face, including environmental threats, market centralization trends and black swan events.

Webinar:

https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/98506372780
Passcode: NICO2022

About the Speaker Series:

Wednesdays@NICO is a vibrant weekly seminar series focusing broadly on the topics of complex systems and data 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.

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