Events
Past Event
WED@NICO SEMINAR: Lightning Talks with Northwestern Post Doctoral Fellows and Scholars!
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
12:00 PM
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Lower Level, Chambers Hall
Details
Speakers:
Joshua Becker - Post Doctoral Fellow, Kellogg and NICO
Yixue Wang - Ph.D. Student, Technology and Social Behavior
Frank van der Wouden - Post Doctoral Fellow, Kellogg and NICO
Igor Zakhlebin- Ph.D. student, Technology and Social Behavior
Abstracts and Bios:
Joshua Becker - Collected vs Collective Intelligence in the Wisdom of Crowds
Abstract: A common assumption in research on the wisdom of crowds is that in order to produce accurate decisions, groups must be composed of individuals who are socially and statistically independent. However, our research shows both computationally and experimentally that social influence can improve belief accuracy, as long as people are embedded in decentralized communication networks. These results hold in domains such as financial forecasting, physician diagnoses, and even political belief formation in echo chambers.
Bio: Joshua Becker is a postdoctoral fellow at NICO and the Kellogg School of Management specializing in collective intelligence. Their current research focuses on the “wisdom of crowds” and seeks to understand how social information processing impacts belief accuracy. Joshua’s mix of formal theoretical models and web-based experiments has been published in venues including Science and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Yixue Wang - The Role of Professional Feedback in Online News Comment Quality and Engagement
Abstract: News commenting is a prevalent form of online interaction, but it is fraught with issues, such as a low quality of discussion that often takes place. While various forms of moderation can be used to maintain quality, one technique that is underexplored is the role of professional feedback in normative signaling that helps set quality expectations for commenters. This talk will present an analysis of more than 13 million NYT comments and provide evidence that professional feedback in the form of NYT Picks is associated with an increase in quality and frequency of user commenting.
Bio: Yixue Wang is a second-year Ph.D. student in the Technology and Social Behavior program at Northwestern, focusing on computational journalism and social science. She analyzes human behavioral data as a means to enhance diversity, maintain civility and eliminate biases. She is a member of the Computational Journalism Lab at Northwestern, a Data Science fellow at Northwestern Data Science Initiative, and was a data engineer at a political analytics startup before her Ph.D.
Frank van der Wouden - The Adjacent Possible: Why some technological combinations are driving innovation
Abstract: Why are some technological combinations driving innovation? From all possible technological combinations, only very few occur. We use 7.8 million US patents to build networks of technological co-occurrence. We find that technologies sharing a common neighbor are most likely to be introduced in subsequent years. This is because inventors with experience in the commonly shared technology recognizes its value.
Bio: Frank van der Wouden is a post-doctoral research at Kellogg School of Management and NICO. He is interested in networks of collaboration, technological evolution and the spatial distribution of economic activities.
Igor Zakhlebin - Diffusion of Scientific Articles across Online Media
Abstract: Based on millions of social media posts, news articles, blog entries and other web pages, we quantify the cross-medium dynamics and structure of diffusion for scientific articles. We find that initial bursts of posting activity tend to co-occur in time across media, which helps us determine the speed at which individual media pick up scientific information. We use a network inference algorithm to study the underlying structure of diffusion and analyze the structure of the resulting network.
Bio: Igor is a PhD student in Technology and Social Behavior, a joint degree in Computer Science and Communication. He works with mentions of scientific research on social media to understand how information cascades originating in different media interact with each other as well as the role of individual users in dissemination of such information.
Live Stream:
Time
Wednesday, March 6, 2019 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Location
Lower Level, Chambers Hall Map
Contact
Calendar
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
WED@NICO WEBINAR: István Kovács, Northwestern University "How can we learn from noisy, incomplete, or even biased network data?"
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
12:00 PM
Details
Speaker:
István Kovács, Assistant Professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Northwestern University
Title:
How can we learn from noisy, incomplete, or even biased network data?
Abstract:
Network theory is a powerful tool to describe and study complex systems, and there has been tremendous progress in mapping large networks in all areas of science, leading to a growing library of complex network datasets. Yet, inherent limitations of the measurements lead to errors, biases and missing data. Therefore, as in any other quantitative field, it would be of paramount importance to characterize the uncertainty of our maps. Yet, unlike a simple error bar for a single valued quantity, the uncertainty of a network structure itself is expected to have a complex, network structure, requiring novel methodologies. Focusing on biological networks, we show how such detailed information can help us to solve key problems, such as link prediction, noise reduction or functional annotation. I will close by highlighting ongoing research directions and some surprising connections to modern physics. To conclude, putting error bars on our network maps is not a nuisance but an essential ingredient in addressing long standing problems in the field.
Speaker Bio:
István Kovács is Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Northwestern University. Previously he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Network Science Institute at Northeastern University, a visiting researcher in the Center for Cancer Systems Biology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and at University of Toronto, as well as at the Department of Network and Data Science of the Central European University. He received a PhD in Physics from Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary, working at the Wigner Research Centre for Physics, during which he spent time at Semmelweis University and University of Saarbrücken, Germany. His group develops novel methodologies to predict the emerging structural and functional patterns in problems ranging from systems biology to quantum physics, in close collaboration with experimental groups.
Webinar:
Webinar link: https://northwestern.zoom.us/s/93326446732
Passcode: nico
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.
Time
Wednesday, October 21, 2020 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Contact
Calendar
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
WED@NICO WEBINAR: Cristopher Moore, Santa Fe Institute "TBA"
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
12:00 PM
Details
Speaker:
Cristopher Moore, Professor, Santa Fe Institute
Title:
TBA
Abstract:
TBA
Speaker Bio:
Cristopher Moore received his B.A. in Physics, Mathematics, and Integrated Science from Northwestern University, and his Ph.D. in Physics from Cornell. From 2000 to 2012 he was a professor at the University of New Mexico, with joint appointments in Computer Science and Physics. Since 2012, Moore has been a resident professor at the Santa Fe Institute. He has written 150 papers at the boundary between physics and computer science, ranging from quantum computing, to phase transitions in NP-complete problems, to the theory of social networks and efficient algorithms for analyzing their structure. He is an elected Fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Mathematical Society, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. With Stephan Mertens, he is the author of The Nature of Computation from Oxford University Press.
Webinar:
A webinar link will be posted here shortly, or can be found at: bit.ly/WedatNICO
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.
Time
Wednesday, October 28, 2020 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Contact
Calendar
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
WED@NICO WEBINAR: Madeline Kneeland, Cornell University "TBA"
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
12:00 PM
Details
Speaker:
Madeline Kneeland, Assistant Professor, SC Johnson College of Business, Cornell University
Title:
TBA
Abstract:
TBA
Speaker Bio:
Madeline Kneeland’s research spans strategy and organizational theory and answers questions related to social networks, network dynamics, and innovation. Her dissertation examined how intra-firm network dynamics impact individual level performance in the context of a law firm. Another stream of her research explores how individuals and firms are able to create unusual and technologically distant innovation.
Webinar:
A webinar link will be posted here shortly, or can be found at: bit.ly/WedatNICO
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.
Time
Wednesday, November 4, 2020 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Contact
Calendar
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
WED@NICO WEBINAR: Hope Michelson, The University of Illinois "TBA"
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
12:00 PM
Details
Speaker:
Hope Michelson, Associate Professor, Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics, The University of Illinois
Title:
TBA
Abstract:
TBA
Speaker Bio:
Hope Michelson studies the dynamics of poverty and food security in low-income countries where market failures are a fact of life. One of her key subjects is the interaction of international development efforts with local and large-scale agribusiness. She investigates how small farmers respond to the expansion of international supply chains, the sourcing of agricultural products, and the buying and selling of agricultural inputs.
Webinar:
A webinar link will be posted here shortly, or can be found at: bit.ly/WedatNICO
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.
Time
Wednesday, November 18, 2020 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Contact
Calendar
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
WED@NICO WEBINAR: Lightning Talks with Northwestern Fellows and Scholars!
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
12:00 PM
Details
NICO is hosting a lightning talk seminar each term as a part of our Wednesdays@NICO seminar series. Northwestern graduate students and postdoctoral fellows are invited to participate. To sign up for future lightning talks, please visit: https://bit.ly/2lRqSXK
Speakers:
TBA
Webinar:
A webinar link will be posted here shortly, or can be found at: bit.ly/WedatNICO
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.
Time
Wednesday, December 2, 2020 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Contact
Calendar
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)