Center For Information and Technology
The Center For Information and Technology (CITS) is dedicated to research and education about the cultural transitions and social innovations associated with technology, particularly in the highly dynamic environments that seem so pervasive in organizations and societies today. It also works to improve engineering through infusing social insights into the innovative process. Faculty associated with the Center bring their diverse disciplinary perspectives—which range from Art and English to Sociology and Communication to Computer Science and Electrical Engineering—into conversation, forwarding cutting edge research across the engineering sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities. Affiliated faculty have, naturally, pursued research to assess the impact of big data and analytical techniques on the way people live and work.
Dynamic Networks: Analysis and Modeling
In an ongoing project, the Dynamic Networks: Analysis and Modeling (DYNAMO) group focuses on heterogeneity in dynamic networks: heterogeneity of node behaviors across network structure and time, heterogeneity of the coupling of structure and attributes, and heterogeneity across networks. Against this backdrop, the project will consider the basic problems of clustering (partitioning), classification/regression, decomposition of networks into its basis elements, and the problem of explaining global network behaviors by small network fragments. These problems will be considered for a single network and for multiple networks. Within a network, heterogeneity is observed when nodes or clusters exhibit different behaviors, for instance due to hidden or missing data. Across networks, heterogeneity is observed in the diversity of subject populations or among network instances.
Broom Center for Demography
The Leonard and Gretchan Broom Center for Demography facilitates and engages in research and training in social demography and population studies, with particular emphasis on social and economic inequalities and health disparities. Key issues explored by Center Associates include inequalities across social groups defined by gender, sexuality, race/ethnicity, and immigration status; population-environment interactions; the determinants of population health; migration flows; spatial demography; and the allocation of resources within and among families, workplaces, schools, and other social institutions.