Speaker: Prof. Dan
Braha
Title: Mining Social Influence
Zoom Link
Abstract:
Social influence plays an important role in human behavior and decisions. Sources of influence can be external and independent of social context or originate from personal connections, such as family and friends. An important question is how to disentangle personal social influence from external influences. Here, we present a novel methodology to identify the extent of social influence based on large-scale observational data and apply it to two central political and economic issues—elections and financial market crises.
Bio:
Dan Braha is a full professor at the University of Massachusetts and is also co-faculty of the New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI), where he conducts research and teaches courses in complex systems. He was a visiting professor at the MIT Engineering Systems Division where he conducted research and taught in the MIT's System Design and Management Program. Prior to joining UMD, he was a visiting professor at the MIT Center for Product Development, a research scientist at Boston University, and a tenured faculty at Ben-Gurion University. Prof. Braha advanced the area of complex systems by introducing novel methodologies for understanding the functionality, dynamics, robustness, fragility, and control of large-scale engineering, social, economic, financial, political, managerial, and organizational systems. He has published in various prestigious journals, authored or edited nine books, and his work is regularly cited and covered by various national and international news media including: Science Magazine, The Economist, Wired Magazine, Le Monde, The Huffington Post, New Scientist, The New Republic, Nova, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Standard-Times, International Business Times, The Irish Times, Science and Technology Daily (in Chinese), Business Insider, and Technology Review (published by MIT). He is also regularly invited to present his work as keynote and plenary speaker in high-profile international conferences and symposiums, including by The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences; the MIT SDM Systems Thinking; the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME); The IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society; the RAND Corporation; and GE Global Research. Prof. Braha's passion for research is evenly matched with his passion for teaching where he was honored six times to receive university awards for excellence in teaching. Prof. Braha serves, among other roles, as Editor of the Complexity Series at Springer, Academic Editor for PLOS ONE, Area Editor of Systems for Research in Engineering Design, and for the past 22 years Program Chair of the International Conference on Complex Systems (ICCS).
