Noshir Contractor – Noshir Contractor

Diego Gómez-Zará presents at MESO 2018

Noshir Contractor — Mon, 15 Oct 2018 23:57:24 +0000

Diego Gómez-Zará, a Ph.D. student in Technology and Social Behavior, is going to present at the Center for the Study on Media and Society in Argentina (MESO), University of San Andrés. He will present the My Dream Team research project conducted at Universidad de Buenos Aires in 2017. The panels will deal with topics such as networks, culture, political communication, the entertainment industry, among other topics. There will be presentations from scholars affiliated with universities throughout the region.

Complexity Explorables by Dirk Brockmann

Noshir Contractor — Mon, 15 Oct 2018 16:48:49 +0000

Complexity Explorables is a website where people easily explore some complex systems examples while playing models with fun.

For example, “I herd you!” enables you to explore how different network structures impact the spread of a disease in a population. Consequently, you can understand a phenomenon called “herd immunity”, defined that “a disease can be eradicated even if not the entire population is immunized.” The webpage is simple, yet very informative.

If you’re interested, there are many other examples and models. Check them out at http://www.complexity-explorables.org/explorables/!

Aaron M. Schecter receives the J. Richard Hackman Award at INGRoup 2018

Noshir Contractor — Fri, 03 Aug 2018 18:04:21 +0000

Aaron M. Schecter, SONIC alumnus and Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering and Management Science, received the 2018 J. Richard Hackman Award for his Ph.D. dissertation at INGroup 2018. The conference recognizes recent graduate students whose dissertation shows the greatest potential to advance the study of groups.

His dissertation entitled “It’s About Time: Theorizing the Antecedents and Outcomes of Dynamic Processes in Teams and Multiteam Systems” presented a sophisticated theoretical analysis combined with four controlled experimental studies. The relational event modeling framework provided a new conceptual and methodological approach to studying teams process in Multi-Team Systems.

At the award ceremony, Schecter’s dissertation was described as “a clear and innovative interdisciplinary approach by contributing to the advancement of team research methodology.”

Dr. Schecter, who is an assistant professor at the Terry College of business at the University of Georgia, received a commemorative plaque, a $1,000 check, and an invitation to present his dissertation in a featured session at the following year’s INGRoup conference, in Portugal.

In the picture (left-to-right): Leslie DeChurch, Noshir S. Contractor, Aaron Schecter, and M. Scott Poole.

SONIC Lab presented at INGRoup 2018

Noshir Contractor — Tue, 24 Jul 2018 18:58:36 +0000

On July 19-21, Professor Noshir Contractor, the SONIC doctoral students Diego Gómez-Zará and Brennan Antone, and the SONIC Research Assistant Professor Alina Lungeanu presented at the 13th Annual INGRoup Conference held in Bethesda, Maryland.

Larson, L., Gokhman, I., DeChurch, L. A, Bell, S., & Contractor, N. S.
Team performance in space crews: Houston, we have a teamwork problem.

DeChurch, L. A., Wang, W., Harris, A.M., & Contractor, N. S.
Mapping the modern science of teams.

Antone, W., Gibson, Z., Bell, S. T., Lungeanu, A., DeChurch, L. A., & Contractor, N. S.
Crew Recommender for Effective Work in Space (CREWS).

Lungeanu, A., Park, P., DeChurch, L. A., & Contractor, N. S.
Deep space collaboration: Impact of latency and social networks on collaborative work.

Lungeanu, A., Twyman, M., Mesmer-Magnus, J., DeChurch, L. A., & Contractor, N. S.
The emergence and development of crew shared mental models: An agent-based model.

Plummer, G., Harris, A., Mesmer-Magnus, J., DeChurch, L, & Contractor, N.
What will motivate and challenge space crews on a journey to Mars?

Cheung, K., DeChurch, L. A., & Contractor, N. S.
Teams of founders versus founding teams: Unpacking the narratives of startup founding teams.

Ng, J.; Contractor, N. S.
Social Media & Teams: How Social Media Enables & Constrains Team Coordination Structures

Gómez-Zará, D., Ng, J., Twyman, M., Andreoli, S., DeChurch, L. A., & Contractor, N. S.
Social cognition and team assembly: Competence, warmth, or embeddedness. Using team recommender systems to study users’ search preferences.

Mesmer-Magnus, J. R., Niler, A. A., Plummer, G., DeChurch, L. A., & Contractor, N. S.
Antecedents of team cognition: A meta-analysis.

Kyosuke Tanaka and Diego Gómez-Zará attend SICSS Chicago 2018

Noshir Contractor — Wed, 20 Jun 2018 21:17:25 +0000

The SONIC Ph.D. students, Kyouske Tanaka and Diego Gómez-Zará, participated at the Summer Institute in Computational Social Science, in Chicago. The purpose of the Summer Institute was to bring together graduate students and early career researchers in both social science and data science. Content included live-streamed lectures from the main site at Duke University as well as guest speakers who presented on cutting-edge computational research and methods. Topics covered include text analysis, digital data collection, experimental design, non-probability sampling, agent-based modeling, and ethics.

Noshir Contractor and Kyosuke Tanaka presented their research at #ICA2018

Noshir Contractor — Mon, 28 May 2018 10:37:15 +0000

Noshir Contractor and Kyosuke Tanaka presented their research at the 68th Annual Conference of International Communication Association in Prague, the Czech Republic:

Tanaka, K., DeChurch, L., & Contractor, N. (2018, May). Origins of omission and commission errors in perceptions of group communication networks. Paper to be presented at the 68th Annual ICA conference, “Voices,” Prague, Czech Republic.
Schultz, M., DeChurch, L., & Contractor, N. (2018, May). Communicating through space and over time. Paper to be presented at the 68th Annual ICA conference, “Voices,” Prague, Czech Republic.

How network theory predicts the value of Bitcoin

Noshir Contractor — Mon, 07 May 2018 18:58:20 +0000

A recent research by Spencer Wheatley at ETH Zurich in Switzerland and a few colleagues shows that the key measure of value for cryptocurrencies is the network of people who use them. What’s more, they say, once Bitcoin is valued in this way it becomes possible to see when it is overvalued and perhaps even to spot the telltale signs that a market crash is imminent.

Read the complete article here: https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.05663

And the article published by MIT Technology Review here: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610614/how-network-theory-predicts-the-value-of-bitcoin/

Educational Game Website for Network Concepts

Noshir Contractor — Fri, 04 May 2018 15:47:17 +0000

“It’s Nicky Case!” is a cool website where you can play different kinds of games related to network concepts such as complex contagion and small-world networks. Moreover, there are other games for game theory and theory of voting. Check out the website (http://ncase.me/)!… Read the rest

Diego Gómez-Zará and Silvia Andreoli shared MDT’s results at Radio UBA

Noshir Contractor — Wed, 11 Apr 2018 02:49:41 +0000

The Ph.D. student, Diego Gómez-Zará, and the CITEP’s Director of Projects, Silvia Andreoli, presented the findings and results of the My Dream Team case study elaborated at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina. Both scholars were interviewed in the program “Académicamente” transmitted by the radio of the university. The objective of this program is to generate a space for sharing and diffusing research projects of the university. The interview was on April 10th.

SONIC Lab presented the results of My Dream Team case study at CITEP, Argentina.

Noshir Contractor — Tue, 10 Apr 2018 21:06:34 +0000

On April 9th, Professor Noshir Contractor and his Ph.D. student Diego Gómez-Zará presented the results of the team assembly case study conducted at the Center for Technological and Pedagogical Innovation (CITEP – Centro de Innovación en Tecnología y Pedagogía). The talk was given at the University of Buenos Aires in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Noshir and Diego presented how the participants of this academic program searched and invited others to assemble teams. The main results explain the relevant features for creating effective teams and demonstrate how My Dream Team –a web-based teaming search platform– facilitate the formation of teams in educational contexts.