SONIC Researchers Publish “Citation Distance: Measuring Changes in Scientific Search Strategies” in the Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on World Wide Web

2016-04-20Posted inBlog, SONIC News

SONIC JD/PhD candidate Ryan Whalen, along with coauthors Yun Huang (senior research associate at SONIC), Craig Tanis, Anup Sawant (senior software developer at SONIC), Brian Uzzi (SONIC affiliated faculty) and Noshir Contractor (SONIC lab director) recently published an article titled “Citation Distance: Measuring Changes in Scientific Search Strategies” in the Proceedings of the 25th International Conference Companion on World Wide Web.… Read the rest

SONIC Receives Funding from Northwestern University’s Office of the Provost to Create New Discussion Board Platform

2016-04-18Posted inBlog, SONIC News

Lab Director Noshir Contractor, IEMS Professor Seyed Iravani, and SONIC PhD candidate Jackie Ng were recently awarded a unique grant from Northwestern University’s Office of the Provost and Faculty Distance Learning Workshop. Their project titled “Fostering Effective Online Discussion in Higher Education With ‘Nebula’, a Graphical Interface for Discussion Boards” was one of only nine projects to receive funding as part of an initiative to increase Northwestern’s visibility in digital and online teaching environments.… Read the rest

SONIC Researchers highlighted by the Daily Northwestern for work on MOOC

2016-04-07Posted inBlog

In a recent article entitled “Nine faculty groups to receive grants for digital and online technology,” the Daily Northwestern singled out lab members Noshir Contractor, Seyed Iravani, and Jacqueline Ng for their work “designing Nebula, which is a graphical and networked discussion board to generate meaningful discussion and improve learning retention in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)”.… Read the rest

“Tracking the Social Networks of Genes Disrupted in Complex Diseases”

2016-03-31Posted inBlog, Networks in the News
unnamedThe Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics reports on a recent study by a team of scientists from DCB, UNIL, SIB, CHUV, MIT and Harvard. The team tracked the social networks of genes disrupted in complex diseases. Taking inspiration from social networks, the researchers applied techniques similar to those used in SNA to gain information about users (i.e.… Read the rest

“Twitter can predict hurricane damage as well as emergency agencies”

2016-03-17Posted inBlog, Networks in the News

twitter fileJohn Bohannon of Science News reports on a recent study by Yury Kryvasheyeun, a research at Australia’s National Information and Communications Technology Research Centre of Excellence in Melbourne.Kryvasheyeun’s team demonstrated that twitter data collected during Hurricane Sandy in 2012 can be a better predictor of damage that FEMA’s models for a fraction of the cost.… Read the rest