Katy Börner, SLIS faculty member and organizer of the Networks and Complex Systems Talk Series announced the final talk for the Spring 2009 schedule. The talk will be held on Monday, May 4, 2009 in the Indiana University Wells Library - SLIS Room 001 at 6:00 p.m. The speaker will be David Lazer, Director of the Program on Networked Governance at Harvard University, and Associate Professor of Public Policy. The talk abstract and speaker bio are below.
Life in the network: The coming age of computational social science
Abstract: An increasing fraction of human interactions are digitally captured. These digital breadcrumbs, combined with substantial computational power, create enormous opportunities for ground breaking science. This talk will discuss what some of the potential opportunities are for developing an improved understanding of collective human behavior, as well the potential barriers to the emergence of a "computational social science." In particular, the objective of this talk will be to spur discussion regarding how to bridge the gap between various methods for data mining and enhancing understanding of human behavior.
Bio: David Lazer is Director of the Program on Networked Governance at Harvard University, and Associate Professor of Public Policy. His research focuses on issues around the collective governance issues that arise when we think of network as a public good. He has examined this issue in many domains, from examining how agencies work together, to how interest groups are linked, to how teams work together. His research has been published in the top general scientific journals, as well as top journals in political science and organizational theory.
Note: David Lazer will also give a talk in the Cognitive Science speaker series on Monday, May 4 from 4:00-5:00 p.m., in the Dogwood Room of the Indiana University Memorial Union. The title of the talk is — How we think together: the role of social networks in collective problem solving.
Posted April 29, 2009