Human Dynamics and Big Data
Hosted by the Center for Human Dynamics in the Mobile Age (HDMA)
NSF-IBSS Project
August 01-02, 2016 in San Diego, California, USA
This specialist meeting (workshop) is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) project award #1416509, IBSS: Spatiotemporal Modeling of Human Dynamics Across Social Media and Social Networks. The goal of this workshop is to foster the multidisciplinary collaboration in related research disciplines, including geography, linguistics, computer science, political science, public health, and communication. The two-day workshop (August 01 and August 02, 2016), organized by the Center for Human Dynamics in the Mobile Age (HDMA) at San Diego State University, will bring together over 30 specialists drawn from many disciplines. The workshop will assess the current state of the art technologies and tools for studying human dynamics and Big Data, identify and prioritize a research agenda, and begin the development of a research community of collaborating scholars working on these Big Data, social media, and human dynamics issues.
Over 30 specialists and scholars will be invited by the NSF IBSS project team, consisting of PI Ming-Hsiang Tsou (Geography) and Co-PIs from Brian Spitzberg (Communication), Jean Mark Gawron (Linguistics), Heather Corliss (Public Health), Jay Lee (Geography, Kent State), Xinyue Ye (Geography, Kent State), and Xuan Shi (Geosciences, U of Arkansas). The meeting will include plenary presentations by invited experts, lightning talks, and focus group discussions. This workshop will generate a final report to be published on the IBSS project website. This year, our research theme will be “Human Dynamics and Big Data”. The dynamic supply of big data from millions of social media messages, GPS tracks, medical records, wireless sensors, electronic health records, web pages, and cellular phones, becomes an important research domain. Big data provide untapped potentials for discovering and analyzing dynamic human problems, including business analytics, disease outbreaks, traffic patterns, urban dynamics, bioinformatics, and environmental changes. Such data offer golden opportunities for scientists to develop new tools, new methods, and new theories for human dynamics. However, Big Data Science requires transdisciplinary collaboration and research methodologies to integrate multiple perspectives into collaborative research endeavors. This workshop will build a collaborative platform for scientists and researchers to work together. Specific research questions to be addressed in the workshop may include:
1. How to reduce the dimensionality of big data datasets in ways that help humans conduct analysis or create knowledge?
2. How do different social network structures affect the scope and speed of the spatial diffusion processes for memes?
3. Are there community detection approaches to social media that can fruitfully provide metrics/ratios of pro- versus counter-frame social networks predictive of social policy formation (e.g., vaccine policy, marijuana legalization, etc.)?
4. Will adapting the Multilevel Model of Meme Diffusion to include behavioral theories result in a model that improves prediction of meme diffusion?
5. Are there search filters/ontologies that can facilitate focus on actionable social media messages during natural disasters?
6. How can parallel and distributed computing resources facilitate big data analytics on human dynamics?
7. What are opportunities and challenges of open source toolkit development for human dynamics studies?
PI, Co-PIs, and Senior Personnel:
• Dr. Ming-Hsiang Tsou (Principle Investigator, NSF-IBSS, Geography at SDSU) bio
• Dr. Brian H. Spitzberg (Co-PI, NSF-IBSS, Communication at SDSU) bio paper
• Dr. Jean Mark Gawron (Co-PI, NSF-IBSS, Linguistics at SDSU) bio slides
• Dr. Heather Corliss (Senior Personnel, NSF-IBSS, Public Health at SDSU) bio slides
• Dr. Jay Lee (Co-PI, NSF-IBSS, Geography at Kent State) bio slides
• Dr. Michael Peddecord (Graduate School of Public Health at SDSU)
• Dr. Xinyue Ye (Senior Personnel, NSF-IBSS, Geography at Kent State) bio slides
• Dr. Xuan Shi (Senior Personnel, NSF-IBSS, Geosciences at U of Arkansas) bio
• Dr. Lanxue Dang (Geography at Kent State)
Participant List:
IBSS Project National Visiting Committee (NVC) Members
Dr. Daniel Sui (Geography, Ohio State University) bio paper slides
Dr. Anatoliy Gruzd (Ted Rogers School of Management at Ryerson University, Canada) bio paper
Dr. Jeannette N. Sutton (Communication, University of Kentucky) bio paper slides
Invited
Dr. May Yuan (GIScience, University of Texas at Dallas) bio paper
Mr. Clay Fink (Applied Physics Laboratory, The John Hopkins University) bio paper slides
Dr. Kyounghee (Hazel) Kwon (Social and Behavioral Sciences, Arizona State University) bio paper slides
Ms. Chi Bahk (Epidemico Inc., Boston) bio paper slides
Dr. Bo Zhao (Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University) bio slides
Dr. Marta Jankowska (CWPHS, UC San Diego) bio paper slides
Dr. Atsushi Nara (Geography/HDMA, San Diego State University) slides
Dr. Joe Gibbons (Sociology/HDMA, San Diego State University) bio paper slides
Dr. Eric Buhi (Public Health/HDMA, San Diego State University) bio paper
Dr. Lourdes Martinez (Communication/HDMA, San Diego State University) bio paper slides
Dr. Caroline Thompson (Public Health, San Diego State University) bio paper
Dr. Melody K. Schiaffino (Public Health, San Diego State University)
Dr. Leslie Ray (Senior Epidemiologist, County of San Diego HHS)
Dr. Xiaobai Liu (Computer Science, San Diego State University) bio paper slides
Dr. Rob Malouf (Linguistics, San Diego State University) slides
Dr. Xianfeng Yang (Civil Engineering, San Diego State University)
Dr. Sahar Ghanipoor Machiani (Civil Engineering, San Diego State University) slides
Mr. Philip Mai bio
HDMA Center Research Team
Chenggang Lai (University of Arkansas)
Jay Yang (HDMA,Graduate student at SDSU)
Su Han (HDMA, Graduate student at SDSU)
Chris Allen (HDMA, Graduate student at SDSU)
Alejandra Coronado (HDMA, Graduate student at SDSU)
Hao Zhang (HDMA, Graduate student at SDSU)
Katy Torres (HDMA, Undergraduate at SDSU)
Ning Xu (HDMA, Graduate student at SDSU)
Elias Issa (HDMA, Graduate student at SDSU)
Rick Zhang (HDMA, Graduate student at SDSU)
Ashley Aure (Linguistics, Graduate student at SDSU)