Events
Past Event
WED@NICO WEBINAR: Sune Lehmann, Technical University of Denmark "How was your network data generated?"
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
12:00 PM
Details
Speaker:
Sune Lehmann, Professor of Networks and Complexity Science, DTU Compute, Technical University of Denmark
Title:
How was your network data generated?
Abstract:
A recent trend in the world of Network Science is higher-order network analysis. In higher-order analyses we go beyond graphs by focusing on interactions involving more than two individuals through e.g. hypergraphs, simplicial complexes, motif-derived data, or tensors and higher-order Markov chains. But how do we choose which structures are relevant for which networks? In my talk, I discuss an (I think) heretofore overlooked aspect of temporal network analysis, namely the constraints imposed by the network generating process. These constraints offer a unifying perspective to organize higher order network models. I discuss how the structure of communication events strongly constrain network configurations and shape network flows in a way that strongly impacts key areas of dynamic network analysis from community detection and null models, to our approach to modeling dynamics.
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.
Time
Wednesday, January 26, 2022 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Contact
Calendar
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
Data Science Nights - MAY 2026 - Speaker: Xudong Tang, Computer Science and NICO
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
5:30 PM
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M416, Technological Institute
Details
MAY MEETING: Thursday, May 28, 2026 at 5:30pm (US Central)
LOCATION:
ESAM Conference Room, Tech M416
2145 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208
AGENDA:
5:30pm - Meet and greet with refreshments
6:00pm - Talk with Xudong Tang, PhD Student, Computer Science, NICO, and the Human-AI Collaboration Lab, Northwestern University
TALK TITLE:
Human and Machine Perception of Voice Similarity
ABSTRACT:
Modern voice cloning systems generate synthetic speech that listeners frequently cannot identify as being synthetic. But a voice can sound natural without sounding like the intended person, and what determines whether a clone is heard as a particular person is an open question. Here we report a large-scale preregistered experiment in which we collected 92,239 responses from 175 participants on their perception of pairs of real recordings, voice clones, and continuously morphed voices drawn from 100 contemporary celebrities across 20 speaker groups. We find that voice clones do not reliably preserve perceived speaker identity, reducing same-speaker judgments by 12.7 percentage points even though the clones are produced by a state-of-the-art text-to-speech model, while leaving different-speaker judgments unchanged. Using continuously morphed stimuli, we find that speakers vary substantially in how much variation their perceived identity tolerates, and that this variation is not predicted by speaker demographics. Speaker embeddings account for 58.9\% (95\% CI = [55.7, 61.9]) of variance in identity judgments, which is more than acoustic features, social attributes, and clone status combined. Once all these observed features are accounted for, clone status adds no additional predictive power. These results shows that the perceptual impact of voice cloning is positional rather than categorical: we can model how listeners judge a voice by how close it falls to the perceptual boundary that defines each speaker's recognizable voice, applying the same criterion to real and synthetic speech alike.
DATA SCIENCE NIGHTS are monthly meetings featuring presentations and discussions about data-driven science and complex systems, organized by Northwestern University graduate students and scholars. Students and researchers of all levels are welcome! For more information: http://bit.ly/nico-dsn
FUTURE DATES:
Data Science Nights will return in September!
Time
Thursday, May 28, 2026 at 5:30 PM - 7:00 PM
Location
M416, Technological Institute Map
Contact
Calendar
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
Spring 2026 Commencement
University Academic Calendar
All Day
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Spring 2026 Commencement
Time
Sunday, June 14, 2026
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University Academic Calendar
Juneteenth - University Closed
University Academic Calendar
All Day
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Juneteenth - University Closed
Time
Friday, June 19, 2026
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University Academic Calendar
Independence Day (observed) - University Closed
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All Day
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Independence Day (observed) - University Closed
Time
Friday, July 3, 2026
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Fall 2026 Classes Begin
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All Day
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Fall 2026 Classes Begin
Time
Wednesday, September 23, 2026
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University Academic Calendar