2010 Info & Soc Networks Symposium (October 4, 2010)

Short bio: Dr. Anatoliy Gruzd is an Assistant Professor in the School of Information Management at Dalhousie University in Canada. He earned his PhD in Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and also holds a MS in Library and Information Science from Syracuse University as well as BS and MS degrees in Computer Science from Dnipropetrovsk National University in Ukraine. Dr. Gruzd’s current research includes the development of various automated text mining techniques and visualization tools for uncovering social networks between online participants based on their digital footprints alone.

Abstract: Many on-line social and collaborative networks have a hidden reality that is partially expressed through the link structure of the network. This hidden reality can be modelled as a placement of the nodes in a latent space. Here, distance in the space is a measure of the closeness or similarity of the entities represented by the nodes. For example, in social networks, users with similar interests would be placed close together in the social space. We will give an overview of models that use the concept of an underlying metric space which influences the generation of links, and show how such models can be used for the reverse process of estimating the location of nodes in the metric space through observing the link structure.

Short bio: Jeannette Janssen is Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, and an Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Computer Science at Dalhousie University. Her field of research is the Analysis and Modeling of Self-Organizing Networks, Combinatorial Optimization.

Abstract: Social bookmarking and tagging networks have evolved from services allowing web users to keep their bookmarks online to full-fledged social networks for tagging and sharing web resources. The tags assigned to web resources by users are believed to hold the promise of serving as a source of human knowledge representation (folksonomies). In this talk we will report on our findings from analyzing networks such as Delicious and Bibsonomy, and we will present an award-winning tag recommendation system with learning capabilities that assists users in tagging web resources.

Short bio: Marek Lipczak is completing his PhD degree in the Faculty of Computer Science at Dalhousie University. He holds a Master’s degree from the Warsaw University of Technology. His thesis research involves the applications of machine learning and natural language processing to the mining of textual resources and socially based data repositories.

Short bio: Evangelos Milios received a diploma in Electrical Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece, in 1980 and Master’s and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, from where he graduated in 1986. While at M.I.T., he was a member of Digital Signal Processing group and he worked on acoustic signal interpretation problems at the M.I.T. Lincoln Laboratory. After spending 5 years doing research on shape analysis and sensor-based mobile robotics in the Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto, he joined York University in 1991 as an Associate Professor. Since July of 1998 he has been with the Faculty of Computer Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he is Professor and Killam Chair of Computer Science. He served as Director of the Graduate Program (1999-2002) and he is currently Associate Dean, Research. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE. He was a member of the ACM Dissertation Award committee (1990-1992), a member of the AAAI/SIGART Doctoral Consortium Committee (1997-2001) and he is co-editor-in-chief of the journal Computational Intelligence. He has published on the processing, interpretation and use of visual and range signals for landmark-based navigation and map construction in single- and multiagent robotics. His current research activity is centered on modelling and mining of content and link structure of Networked Information Spaces.>

Abstract: Sperm whales are extreme in many ways. They live in the deep ocean and have a complex and unusual social system. We identify individuals photographically, and then use network analyses and other methods to describe their social systems and to build models of social structure.

Short bio: Hal Whitehead is a University Research Professor in the Department of Biology at Dalhousie University. He was educated at Cambridge University (BA Mathematics; Diploma in Mathematical Statistics; PhD Zoology). His research focuses on social organization and cultural transmission in the deep-water whales, but he also works on their their ecology, population biology and conservation. Field work is mainly carried out in the North Atlantic and South Pacific Oceans from a 12-m sailing boat. He has developed statistical tools and software for analyzing vertebrate social systems. He uses individual-based stochastic computer models to study cultural evolution, gene-culture coevolution and mating strategies. Hal coedited “Cetacean Societies: Field Studies of Whales and Dolphins” (University of Chicago Press; 2000) and has written “Sperm Whales; Social Evolution in the Ocean” (University of Chicago Press, 2003) and “Analyzing Animal Societies: Quantitative Methods for Vertebrate Social Analysis” (University of Chicago Press, 2008).

Abstract: Working in collaborative teams requires a blurring of professional boundaries, new role definitions, and sharing of professional knowledge, skills and power. One instance of interprofessional collaboration that is currently receiving attention is integrative health care (IHC), a combination of biomedical care and complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). This study builds on studies of teamwork to examine the perspectives and experiences of health care practitioners working at two different integrative health care centres as they strive to adapt their professional identities and practices to working in collaborative interprofessional teams. We analyze how professionals adapt to an environment that is counter to the unique ways they have been socialized, and to observe how they relate to each other and share patient information as team members under one physical and organizational roof. We are currently interviewing the practitioners at each of the two centres as well as attending staff meetings and sitting in the waiting rooms observing. Initial findings and reviews of the literature suggest that collaboration is more than co-location. Without formal structures and strong leadership guiding the team towards collaboration and communication, achieving it is unrealistic.

Short bio: Beverly Wellman is a medical sociologist at the University of Toronto researching and writing on complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) with Merrijoy Kelner. They have spent two decades studying the health care patterns of Canadians who use complementary and alternative medicine, how they learn about it, find their way to practitioners, as well as the ways in which they have been working towards professionalization and regulation, They have now turned their attention to the study of interprofessional collaboration and have chosen integrative health care settings as their research sites. Kelner and Wellman edited _ Complementary and Alternative Medicine: Challenge and Change_ as well as writing many articles on the subject. See their Web site: http://www.utoronto.ca/CAMlab.

In collaboration with Nicholas M. Young†, Paul Stewart‡, Mary Liz Stewart‡
† Independent Scholar (formerly a Research Fellow at the Centre for Race & Ethnicity at Stanford University);
‡ Scholars-in-Residence at Russell Sage College, Troy, NY and also Co-Founders of the Underground Railroad History Project of the New York State Capital Region

We analyze historical data to conduct an exploratory structural investigation into the process that Harriet Tubman used to free her family and friends from slavery.We suggest that she accomplished this feat because of her ability to rely on embedded (Granovetter 1985; Uzzi 1996) network contacts that allowed her to bridge structural holes (Burt 1992) and link with people with whom she was not previously linked (Lin et al., 2001). We also discover evidence of social contagion based not only on structural equivalence (Burt, 1992), but also based on cohesion due to the presence of cliques and cocliques (i.e. the presence of Simmelian Ties). “Two people are Simmelian tied to one another if they are reciprocally and strongly tied to each other and if they are each reciprocally and strongly tied to at least one third party in common” (Krackhardt, 1998). We conclude that Harriet Tubman was able to achieve these successes by a process we call Network Transferability and propose a mathematical representation for the concept. We also highlight the importance of using network analysis for providing empirical meaning to historical events and episodes.

Short bio: Binod Sundararajan is an Assistant Professor of Management School of Business Administration at Dalhousie. His research lies in organizational, professional and business communication; computer-mediated communication; Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL), Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) and social network analysis. He conducts research in business and professional communication practices, adoption and diffusion of mediated technologies, use of CMC in such diverse areas as immigrant entrepreneurship, justice, teaching, collaborative work and learning. He also has a parallel stream of research where he has mapped the social structures and networks of important actors in the Underground Railroad Movement (like Harriet Tubman, William Still, Stephen Myers, Frederick Douglass, Gerritt Smith, etc.). He and his research colleagues are in the process of mapping the social structure of almost the entire movement in the USA and Canada.

Abstract: Organizations, faced with the increasing demands of the global economy, are experiencing shifts in a perspective based on notions of ‘consumers’ and ‘suppliers’ to that of ‘partners’ and ‘relationships’. Within the non-profit sector, where the mission of an organization is based on altruistic goals such as feeding the hungry or educating the poor, one might assume that this shift is less pronounced. Not so. This presentation will demonstrate how one organization is revitalizing its mission, renegotiating its partnerrelationships, and using social network tools to facilitate that shift.

Short bio: Mary-Liz Grise is an Assistant Professor in the School of Business Administration at Dalhousie University. Her research interest is in communication and collaboration that span geographic boundaries. She spend a lot of time playing with websites, creating places for online community building and testing their capacity to involve stakeholders in communicating and collaborating. Her main methodology is action research. She likes to get involved and make a difference! She is in the planning stages for our faculty’s new Action Research Interest Group. In the community arena, she work with Chalice Canada (http://chalice.ca), a child sponsorship agency, in various projects.

Abstract: A major paradigm shift has happened in North American society these days: people think and act in networks rather than in groups. This social network revolution synergestically interpenetrates with two more visible revolutions: the proliferation of the Personal Computer and the accessibility of mobile connectivity. While taken for granted, this triple revolution is linked to major societal shifts in how people connect with each other. I’ll trace some of these shifts and specify key aspects of the socially networked society.

Short bio: Barry Wellman founded the International Network for Social Network Analysis in 1976. A member of the Royal Society of Canada, Wellman has headed two American Sociological Association sections: Community and Communications/Info Tech, as well as the Sociological Research Association honor society. Wellman is the S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology and directs NetLab at the University of Toronto. He’s currently finishing Networked: The New Social Operating System with Lee Rainie, for MIT Press. The book discusses the implications of the confluence of the Triple Revolution: The turn to Social Networks, the proliferation of the personalized Internet, and always accessible Mobile connectivity. His talk will focus on how changes in North American society fostered these transformations.