Zoltan Toroczkai Leads Multidisciplinary NSF Grant

The National Science Foundation's program on Human and Social Dynamics has awarded a multidisciplinary research grant of $700,000 to a group of faculty from the colleges of science, engineering, and arts and letters.  The award will fund co-principal investigators David Hachen (sociology), Omar Lizardo (sociology), Nitesh Chawla (computer science), Mark Alber (mathematics, physics) and principal investigator Zoltan Toroczkai (physics) to develop novel computational and analytical approaches to social network data analysis, using advanced nonlinear time-series methods, community detection algorithms, probabilistic relational models and statistical mechanics. The five investigators are part of the Center for Complex Network Research.

The developed methodology will directly impact commercial and non-commercial applications related to targeted information propagation in large-scale social networks. The team's aspiration is that this will lead to novel efficient technologies in supply-chain management, product placement and delivery systems, health-care services and resource management and emergency alert systems.

The National Science Foundation states that the purpose of the Human and Social Dynamics priority area, is “to promote research and education activities that will enable the nation to better understand the human causes and responses to the myriad forms of change.”