Complexity and Social Networks

This is something I came across. There's a Cambridge Colloquium on Complexity and Social Networks, Spring 2009 taking place at Harvard.

Here's a schedule that was posted:

Tanzeem Choudhury (Dartmouth)
Using Sensors to Make Sense of People: Inferring the Micro and Macro Level Properties of Social Networks from Mobile Sensor Data
March 2, Taubman 275

Damon Centola (MIT)
Diffusion in Social Networks: New Theory and Experiments
April 6, Taubman 275

Jennifer Chayes (Microsoft Research)
TBD
April 13, Bell Hall (Belfer Building)

James Fowler (UCSD)
Genes and Social Networks
April 27, Bell Hall (Belfer Building)

Eszter Hargittai (Northwestern)
TBD
May 11, Bell Hall (Belfer Building)

Note that there is a Northwestern professor on the list of speakers who can perhaps be contacted to bounce off ideas, concerns, or just general issues that are related!

For those interested, the first talk by Tanzeen Choudhury was actually posted online!

You can view it here: http://vimeo.com/3474462?pg=embed&sec=

Using Sensors to Make Sense of People: Inferring the Micro and Macro Level Properties of Social Networks from Mobile Sensor Data

Abstract:
Human behavior in the real world is a difficult thing to study: it is not possible to have human observers follow someone around all day, and surveys often tend to biased and unreliable. On the other hand, sensor data is easy to collect but inferring human behavior from this data is still a challenging problem. In this talk, I will present the probabilistic framework we have developed for inferring the micro-level dynamics of human interactions as well as the macro-level social network structure from local, noisy sensor observations. By studying the micro and macro levels simultaneously we are able to explore the relationship between interaction dynamics (local behavior) and network prominence (a global property), and can identify the behavioral correlates of tie strengths within a network. We believe these methods have the potential to allow more quantitative inquiry into human behavior and social dynamics. They will also enable us to develop socially aware ubiquitous computing systems that are cognizant of and responsive to users' engagement with their social environment.

Bio:
Tanzeem Choudhury is an assistant professor in the computer science department at Dartmouth. She joined Dartmouth in 2008 after four years at Intel Research Seattle. She received her PhD from the Media Laboratory at MIT. Her research involves developing machine-learning techniques for systems that can reason about human activities, interactions, and social networks in everyday environments. Tanzeem's doctoral thesis demonstrated for the first time the feasibility of using wearable sensors to capture and model social networks automatically, on the basis of face-to-face conversations. She was recognized in MIT Technology Review's 2008 TR35 list for her work in this area.