Center for Science of Science & Innovation
Pioneering the science of science.
This Kellogg Center is the first academic hub of its kind to bring together the world's foremost experts in science of science and innovation.
Science takes a leap inward
The Center for Science of Science & Innovation (CSSI) is the first center world-wide dedicated to the field of the science of science. The center builds on Kellogg’s long-standing tradition of excellence in this field and helps bring together faculty and students across Kellogg and Northwestern to further and cement our global thought leadership position in the field. A multidisciplinary community by nature, CSSI also serves as the nexus to bring together thought leaders in closely related fields such as computational social science, network science and artificial intelligence.
CSSI collaborators take scientific methods and turn them upon science itself to establish a systematic, quantitative framework that can make sense of mass quantities of data and identify emerging patterns. Armed with big data spanning all phases of scientific production, a defining feature of our work is a mechanistic approach to developing models that can uncover fundamental patterns in science. By combining our diverse expertise and approaches, the results of this center will lead to a qualitative shift in the way knowledge is discovered, science is funded, scientists are trained and nurtured, and excellence is recognized and rewarded.
We are living in an exciting era where big data permeates every corner of our society and is increasingly essential for human decision-making. This emerging, multidisciplinary field leverages new large-scale datasets and draws tools from complexity sciences and artificial intelligence to help us better understand the fundamental principles underlying the success and failure of innovation.
Awards and recognition
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(2025) Dashun received the 2025 Advanced Science Young Innovator Award, recognizing his exceptional interdisciplinary research in the social sciences, as well as his outstanding promise as an emerging leader in research.
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(June 2025) Dashun was named on the 2025 Researchers to Know list by the Illinois Science & Technology Coalition. This award recognizes Illinois researchers from diverse disciplines whose work is driving, solving real-world problems, and creating inclusive opportunities for innovation.
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(2023) Dashun received the Young Scientist Award from the German Physical Society (DPG), which recognizes outstanding original contributions that use physical methods to develop a better understanding of socio-economic problems.
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(July 8, 2021) Dashun received the Erdős–Rényi Prize for his foundational and empirically grounded theoretical research that has advanced network science in the field of computational social sciences, with a focus on the science of science.
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(Jan. 21, 2021) Dashun was recognized by Thinkers50 as a top 30 management thinker to watch in 2021 for his “refreshing ideas on how we think about — and do — science and innovation.”
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(Dec. 13, 2020) Dashun received the Junior Scientific Award for his contributions to the science of science and his interdisciplinary work across network science, computational social science, and scientometrics.
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(Apr. 28, 2020) CSCI received the Education Honorable Mention for Fast Company’s World Changing Ideas Awards in 2020 as an “initiative that helps inspire better and more equitable learning.”
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(Apr. 21, 2020) CSCI received the Innovations that Inspire Honorable Mention from AACSB in 2020 for transforming how business schools elevate innovation.
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(Mar. 12, 2020) “Early-career setback and future career impact” by Yang Wang, Benjamin F. Jones, and Dashun Wang received recognition from Nature Communications as a top 50 most-read article of 2019 in life and biological sciences.
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(Jan. 21, 2021) Dashun and team received the Altmetric Top 100 award in 2020 for the article “Unequal effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on scientists.” The award recognizes the top 100 most-discussed papers in 2020 across all sciences.
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(Dec. 17, 2019) Dashun and team received the Altmetric Top 100 award in 2019 for the article “Large teams develop and small teams disrupt science and technology” by Lingfei Wu, Dashun Wang & James A. Evans. The award recognizes the top 100 most-discussed papers in 2019 across all sciences.