DATA SCIENCE INITIATIVE

Speaker:

Chris Bail, Professor of Sociology, Political Science, and Public Policy, Duke University

Title:

Bridging Divides with Generative AI

Abstract: 

Political discourse is the soul of democracy, but misunderstanding and conflict can fester in divisive conversations. The widespread shift to online discourse exacerbates many of these problems and corrodes the capacity of diverse societies to cooperate in solving social problems. Scholars and civil society groups promote interventions that make conversations less divisive or more productive, but scaling these efforts to online discourse is challenging. This talk will describe a large-scale experiment that demonstrates how online conversations about divisive topics can be improved with AI tools. Specifically, my colleagues and employ a large language model to make real-time, evidence-based recommendations intended to improve participants’ perception of feeling understood. These interventions improve reported conversation quality, promote democratic reciprocity, and improve the tone, without systematically changing the content of the conversation or moving people’s policy attitudes. These findings replicate during a half year experiment on a large social media platform.

Speaker Bio:

Chris Bail is Professor of Sociology, Political Science, and Public Policy at Duke University, where he founded the Polarization Lab. He studies how artificial intelligence shapes human behavior in a range of different settings—and social media platforms in particular. Chris is passionate about building the field of computational social science. He is the Editor of the Oxford University Press Series in Computational Social Science and the Co-Founder of the Summer Institutes in Computational Social Science. Chris received his PhD from Harvard University in 2011.

Location:

In person: Chambers Hall, 600 Foster Street, Lower Level
Remote option: https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/97722631639
Passcode: NICO2024

About the Speaker Series:

Wednesdays@NICO is a vibrant weekly seminar series focusing broadly on the topics of complex systems, data science and network science. It brings together attendees ranging from graduate students to senior faculty who span all of the schools across Northwestern, from applied math to sociology to biology and every discipline in-between. Please visit: https://bit.ly/WedatNICO for information on future speakers.

Speaker:

Daniel Harris, Assistant Professor of Engineering, Brown University

Title:

At the Interface: Physical Analogy with Interfacial Fluid Mechanics

Abstract: 

Maxwell describes physical analogy as a "partial similarity between the laws of one science and those of another which makes each of them illustrate the other."  Hydrodynamics has long since been a source of physical analogy, sharing similar equations with other seemingly disparate fields of physics.  The focus of this talk will be on physical analogies with interfacial fluid systems, where accessible tabletop experiments can be used to investigate and communicate physical phenomena at vastly different scales.  Following a brief review of some historical examples of analogy in interfacial fluid mechanics, I will describe two recent tabletop experiments developed in our lab that share similarities with certain microscopic colloidal systems.  While physical analogy can be fruitfully used to advance science across disciplines, it can also be leveraged to enhance scientific communication and pedagogy.

Speaker Bio:

Daniel M. Harris is an Assistant Professor of Engineering at Brown University in the Fluids and Thermal Sciences group.  Before joining Brown, Dan was a Postdoctoral Research Associate and Lecturer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the Department of Mathematics.  Dan received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Cornell University in 2010 and his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from MIT in 2015.

Dan’s primary research interests are in interfacial phenomena, microfluidics, and transport phenomena.  His research involves an integrated experimental and theoretical approach.  Dan has also received numerous awards for his scientific visualizations, including being selected as the winner of the 2016 NSF/Popular Science Visualization Challenge in Photography, as well as numerous prizes from the American Physical Society’s Gallery of Fluid Motion and Gallery of Soft Matter.  

Location:

In person: Chambers Hall, 600 Foster Street, Lower Level
Remote option: https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/93585934682
Passcode: NICO2024

About the Speaker Series:

Wednesdays@NICO is a vibrant weekly seminar series focusing broadly on the topics of complex systems, data science and network science. It brings together attendees ranging from graduate students to senior faculty who span all of the schools across Northwestern, from applied math to sociology to biology and every discipline in-between. Please visit: https://bit.ly/WedatNICO for information on future speakers.

Speaker:

Eleni Katifori, Associate Professor, Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania 

Title:

TBA

Abstract: 

TBA

Speaker Bio:

Eleni Katifori is an Associate Professor in the Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania. Prof Katifori’s research group are interested in understanding the physics behind the morphological and functional attributes of living organisms. They primarily focus on questions inspired by and related to biological transport networks and the elasticity and geometry of thin sheets. Professor Katifori received her Ph.D from Harvard University in 2008 and a B.S. from the University of Athens, Greece in 2002.

Location:

In person: Chambers Hall, 600 Foster Street, Lower Level
Remote option: https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/92857810876
Passcode: NICO2024

About the Speaker Series:

Wednesdays@NICO is a vibrant weekly seminar series focusing broadly on the topics of complex systems, data science and network science. It brings together attendees ranging from graduate students to senior faculty who span all of the schools across Northwestern, from applied math to sociology to biology and every discipline in-between. Please visit: https://bit.ly/WedatNICO for information on future speakers.

Speaker:

Serguei Saavedra, Associate Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, MIT

Title:

How Do Ecological Systems Become (re)Assembled?

Abstract: 

One of the most iconic thought experiments in biology is what would happen if we could rewind the tape of life on Earth and play it again. Would the tape have a different story in every replay? Or is there a general order of events? The relevance of this thought experiment is not just philosophical or counterfactual, because (re)assembly processes undergone by ecological systems, from microbes to mega-fauna, are continuously replicating the experiment. By integrating theoretical and empirical work, in this talk I will provide a guideline to increase our understanding about the (re)assembly possibilities of ecological systems. Explaining and predicting the (re)assembly of ecological systems underpins our ability to develop successful interventions in bio-restoration, bio-technologies, and bio-medicine.

Speaker Bio:

Serguei Saavedra is an Associate Professor at MIT in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. He is also an external faculty at Santa Fe Institute. Serguei is a theoretical ecologist focused on understanding the feasibility of observing the emergence, transformations, and regeneration of ecological systems under environmental changes. Before joining MIT in 2016, Serguei studied systems engineering in Mexico; specialized in mathematical modeling at Genoa University; completed his PhD in engineering science at Oxford University; and did his postdoctoral work at the NICO (under the mentorship of Brian Uzzi), Doñana Biological Station, and in the department of environmental systems at ETH.

Location:

In person: Chambers Hall, 600 Foster Street, Lower Level
Remote option: https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/91082510906
Passcode: NICO2024

About the Speaker Series:

Wednesdays@NICO is a vibrant weekly seminar series focusing broadly on the topics of complex systems, data science and network science. It brings together attendees ranging from graduate students to senior faculty who span all of the schools across Northwestern, from applied math to sociology to biology and every discipline in-between. Please visit: https://bit.ly/WedatNICO for information on future speakers.

Speaker:

Joseph Paulsen, Associate Professor, Department of Physics, Syracuse University

Title:

TBA

Abstract: 

TBA

Speaker Bio:

Joseph Paulsen earned a bachelor's degrees in Mathematics and Physics from St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN, and he completed his PhD in Physics at the University of Chicago with Sidney Nagel. He won a National Science Foundation CAREER Award for his work that studies connections between geometry and mechanics in thin materials. Outside of science, one of his passions is trying to squirrel away as much time as possible to ski with his 7-year-old daughter (his son and his wife are not skiers... yet).

Location:

In person: Chambers Hall, 600 Foster Street, Lower Level
Remote option: https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/94291553667
Passcode: NICO2024

About the Speaker Series:

Wednesdays@NICO is a vibrant weekly seminar series focusing broadly on the topics of complex systems, data science and network science. It brings together attendees ranging from graduate students to senior faculty who span all of the schools across Northwestern, from applied math to sociology to biology and every discipline in-between. Please visit: https://bit.ly/WedatNICO for information on future speakers.