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My research focuses on understanding how people use dynamic social networks to share information and create community. I am interested in complex adaptive systems, self-organizing virtual teams, and the social dynamics of collaboration.

Free/Libre Open Source Software Development

I am a member of the FLOSS research group at Syracuse University. Among our many recent efforts, I am investigating the social dynamics of communication across channels in FLOSS development teams. I'm also working on replicating some prior FLOSS studies using analysis workflows.

Social Networks

My 2007 Master's thesis, Exploring Peer Prestige in Academic Hiring Networks (1.2 MB .pdf) compares the hiring networks of iSchools and Computer Science departments to understand which network characteristics may predict US News & World Report graduate program rankings. Please contact me if you are interested in the data set.

The ASNA 2006 conference paper written with Lada Adamic and Mick McQuaid, The Small Worlds of Academic Hiring Networks (1.1 MB .pdf) is about prestige and patterns of hiring in academia.

The full i-School network comprises 152 nodes and 429 edges, summarizing the 674 PhD degrees held by full-time faculty members of the 19 members of the iSchool Caucus as of January 2007.

This network visualization is a comparison data set of the faculty of 29 top computer science departments in North America.  With 123 nodes, the set has 572 edges and summarizes 1121 PhDs in computer science.

Complex Adaptive Systems

Try out my multi-agent simulation for a model of HIV & AIDS transmission in Axtell & Epstein's SugarScape , implemented with Netlogo. Adjust the variables to see their effect on the disease transmission events.

An adaptive systems approach to evolving algorithms for geographical search in networks would allow parallel testing of many diverse algorithms on graphs with many different characteristics.  My EECS 594 research proposal, Adaptive Geographical Search in Networks (0.2 MB .pdf) is a short overview of this approach, and the accompanying presentation is available online at SlideShare.