Computing Society and Culture

Date: March 6, 2015

Time: 12:30pm – 1:30pm

Room: Wells Library, Rm LI 030

Abstract:

Accumulation of social and cultural data-from historical documents to massive data from online social media-is opening up new possibilities to apply mathematical, computational, and statistical methods to the study of human behaviors, social systems, culture, and humanities. In this talk, I will talk about recent studies that apply computational, data-driven approaches to investigate large-scale social and cultural phenomena, such as spreading of viral memes.

Biography:

Yong-Yeol (YY) Ahn is an assistant professor at Indiana University School of Informatics and Computing and a co-founder of Janys Analytics. He develops and leverages mathematical and computational methods to study complex systems such as cells, the brain, society, and culture. His recent contribution includes a new framework to identify pervasively overlapping modules in networks, network-based algorithms to predict viral memes, and a new computational approach to study food culture. He is a recipient of several awards including Microsoft Research Faculty Fellowship. He worked as a postdoctoral research associate at the Center for Complex Network Research at Northeastern University and as a visiting researcher at the Center for Cancer Systems Biology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute for three years after earning his PhD in Statistical Physics from KAIST in 2008.