Faculty & Contributors
A Community of Thought Leaders
CSSI is proud to bring together so many top experts in the fields of complex sciences. The core of our team is made up of professors, doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows at the Kellogg School of Management and Northwestern University, but our community of collaborators spans the globe. Here’s a look at the team behind the science of science, as well as key contributors and supporters.
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The Center is an extraordinary investment, bringing together world-leading researchers to decode innovation and the progress of knowledge.
Leadership Network
Dashun Wang, Director
Professor of Management & Organizations / Professor of Industrial Engineering & Management Sciences / Core faculty at Northwestern Institute of Complex Systems (NICO)
Professor Wang’s research focuses on the science of science. He joined the faculty at Kellogg in 2016 after teaching at Pennsylvania State University and leading a big data initiative at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center. He also holds appointments at Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering & Applied Science and NICO.
Luis Amaral
Professor of Chemical & Biological Engineering / Professor of Physics & Astronomy / Co-Director, Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO) Faculty
Professor Amaral conducts and directs research that provides insight into the emergence, evolution and stability of complex social and biological systems. He holds appointments at Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering & Applied Science and the Feinberg School of Medicine.
James Evans
Professor / Director, Knowledge Lab / Faculty Director, Masters Program in Computational Social Science, University of Chicago
Professor Evans’s research focuses on the collective system of thinking and knowing. At the University of Chicago, he is Director of Knowledge Lab, which has collaborative, granting and employment opportunities. Evans also founded and now directs on the Computational Social Science program at Chicago, and sponsors an associated Computational Social Science workshop.
Santo Fortunato
Professor / Director of the Center for Complex Networks and Systems Research, Indiana University
Professor Fortunato’s research areas are network science and computational social science, and aims to detect community structures in networks, analyze and model social and information networks, identify citation patterns, and more. Fortunato joined the faculty at Indiana University in 2016.
Benjamin Jones
Gordon and Llura Gund Family Professor of Entrepreneurship / Professor of Strategy / Faculty Director, Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Kellogg
Professor Jones is faculty director of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Kellogg, which equips leaders to drive the kind of innovation, entrepreneurship and growth that matters in today’s world. His research focuses on innovation and creativity, and he has done work on global economic development, including the roles of education, climate and national leadership in explaining the wealth and poverty of nations.
Brian Uzzi
Richard L. Thomas Professor of Leadership and Organizational Change / Co-Director, Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO) Faculty / Director, Kellogg Architectures of Collaboration Initiative (KACI)
Professor Uzzi is a globally recognized teacher, consultant and speaker on leadership, social networks, data science, artificial intelligence and machine learning. He has lectured and advised companies and governments around the world and has been on or visited the faculties of INSEAD, University of Chicago, University of California at Berkeley and Harvard University.
Researchers
Nic Fishman
Pre-Doctoral Fellow, Kellogg School of Management
Nic Fishman (he/they) is currently an MSc candidate in mathematics at Oxford University, after which they will be a Ph.D student in statistics at Harvard University. They completed their Bachelors in Computer Science and Statistics at Stanford University in 2021. They work on methods for studying large datasets in computational social science and computational biology, with a particular interest in causality.
Alexander Furnas
Research Assistant Professor, Kellogg School of Management
Alexander C. Furnas PhD (Zander), is a Research Assistant Professor at the Center for Science of Science and Innovation at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. He has a PhD in political science from the University of Michigan. He researches the political economy of information, with a focus on the production, dissemination and uptake of science and expertise in the policymaking process. His dissertation examines how congressional staffers evaluate and use privately provisioned information produced by outside organizations. He has published articles in the American Political Science Review, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Legislative Studies Quarterly, among others. More generally, he studies the use of information, science, and expertise in policymaking, interest groups, and elite political behavior using survey, text analysis and network methods.
Jian Gao
Research Assistant Professor, Kellogg School of Management
Jian Gao is a Research Assistant Professor in the Center for Science of Science and Innovation (CSSI) at the Kellogg School of Management and the Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO) at Northwestern University. He obtained a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China. His research interests lie in the science of science, computational socioeconomics, network science, and economic complexity. His recent work focuses on measuring the disparities in exposure to artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and estimating the benefits of AI in science and innovation.
Taegyoon Kim
Post-Doctoral Fellow, Kellogg School of Management
Taegyoon Kim is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Science of Science and Innovation at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. He has a Ph.D. in Political Science and Social Data Analytics from the Pennsylvania State University. He develops and applies various computational/statistical methods and experiments (survey, field) to study science communication, political communication, contentious politics, and state politics, focused on the U.S.
Wenyuan Liu
Post-Doctoral Fellow, Kellogg School of Management
Wenyuan Liu is a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Center for Science of Science and Innovation (CSSI) at the Kellogg School of Management. He obtained a bachelor's degree in physics from Wuhan University in China. Then, he moved to Singapore and obtained a Ph.D. degree from Nanyang Technological University. After that, he worked as a research fellow there. His research interests include network theory and science of science
Rui Pan
Pre-Doctoral Fellow, Kellogg School of Management
Rui Pan is a Pre-Doctoral Fellow at the Center for Science of Science and Innovation (CSSI) at the Kellogg School of Management. She is currently an MA candidate in Computational Social Science at the University of Chicago, with affiliations at the Knowledge Lab. She completed her bachelor's degree in Economics and Philosophy at Peking University in 2020. Her research interests lie in understanding team collaboration and innovation with computational methods, including content analysis, social network analysis, and experiments. She is actively seeking an opportunity as a Ph.D. student starting in Fall 2023.
Yifan Qian
Post-Doctoral Fellow, Kellogg School of Management
Yifan Qian is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the School of Business and Management, Queen Mary University of London, London, U.K. His research interest is broadly concerned with computational social science and combines theories and methods from network science, sociology, machine learning, and data science. The general goal of his work is to better understand the structure, functioning, and consequences of complex large-scale networks across a number of empirical domains including citation networks, social networks, and collaboration networks. He received a B.Sc. degree in information and computing science and a M.Sc. degree in computer science from Beihang University in Beijing, China in 2014 and 2017, respectively.
Erzhuo Shao
PhD Student, McCormick School of Engineering
Erzhuo Shao is a first-year Ph.D. student at the McCormick School of Engineering, majoring in Industrial Engineering & Management Sciences. His research interests lie in computational social science, complex network, and neural networks. Currently, he is working on using Large Language Model for scientific article full-text analytics. He received a B.Eng. degree and an M.Sc. degree in Electronic Engineering from Tsinghua University. He also received an M.S.E degree in Biomedical Engineering from Johns Hopkins University.
Giorgio Tripodi
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Kellogg School of Management
Giorgio Tripodi is a Ph.D. candidate (anticipated ’22) in Data Science at Scuola Normale Superiore (Pisa, Italy). He was previously a research fellow at Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna (Pisa, Italy) and a visiting scholar at the Center for Science of Science and Innovation (CSSI) and the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University (‘20). His research interests lie at the intersection between science of science, network science, and economics of innovation, focusing on climate-related technologies and how innovators move and interact in the knowledge space. He received an M.Sc. in economics from Bocconi University in 2015.
Binglu Wang
Pre-Doctoral Research Fellow, Kellogg School of Management
Binglu Wang is a Ph.D. student in Management & Organizations (MORS) at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, with affiliations at the Center for Science of Science and Innovation (CSSI) and the Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO). Her research involves computational social science, technology & innovation, and social networks, with a focus on understanding how community collapses from large-scale datasets. She received her bachelor's degree in information management and information system from Peking University in 2019.
Yifang Wang
Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, Kellogg School of Management
Yifang Wang is currently a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Center for Science of Science (CSSI) and Innovation (CSSI) at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. Her research interests lie broadly in visual analytics and data storytelling, especially in the fields of computational social science and digital humanities. Before that, she obtained a Ph.D. degree in computer science from The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST, 2022) and a B.Eng. degree in software engineering from Zhejiang University (ZJU, 2018).
Sijia Wei
Post-Doctoral Fellow, Kellogg School of Management
Sijia Wei is a Post-doctoral Fellow in the Integrated Health Services and Outcomes Research Fellowship Program at the Center for Education in Health Sciences, Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University. She earned her Ph.D. in Nursing Science from Duke University and is a registered nurse and public health nurse with clinical experience in community-based health care services (i.e., long-term care, home health care, rehabilitation, and hospice). Her research focuses on care coordination processes in care transitions across settings and over time by evaluating relational processes and social mechanisms essential to care coordination using social network analysis and large datasets such as electronic health records. She seeks to understand the complex systemic drivers of health disparities for adults with chronic illnesses and disabilities in the community and aims to improve care efficiency, health equity, and patient outcomes by enhancing care coordination processes.
Seokkyun Woo
Post-Doctoral Fellow, Kellogg School of Management
Seokkyun Joshua Woo is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Science of Science and Innovation at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. He has a Ph.D. in Public Policy from the Georgia Institute of Technology and an MS in Statistics from the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering from the same institution. He is primarily interested in understanding how science and other inventive activities are organized using a wide range of research methods and techniques. In his dissertation, he examined how the work organization of science affects the production and consumption of science, as well as examining its relationship with inequalities observed in various dimensions of science.
Yian Yin
Research Assistant Professor, Kellogg School of Management
Yian Yin is currently a Research Assistant Professor at Kellogg School of Management. As a computational social scientist, he applies and develops novel computational tools to understand how individual, social, and environmental processes independently and jointly promote (or inhibit) scientific progress and innovation achievements. His research has been published in top general audience journals such as Science, Nature, Nature Human Behaviour, and Nature Reviews Physics. Starting July 2023, Yian will join Cornell University as an Assistant Professor of Information Science.
ALUMNI
Yi Bu
Post-Doctoral Fellow, Kellogg School of Management, '19-20
Nima Dehmamy
Research Assistant Professor, Kellogg School of Management, '19-22
Diego Gómez-Zará
Post-Doctoral Fellow, Kellogg School of Management, '21-'22
Woo Seong Jo
Post-Doctoral Fellow, Kellogg School of Management, '19-20
Zihang Lin
Visiting Pre-Doctoral Research Fellow, Kellogg School of Management '21-22
Lu Liu
Pre-Doctoral Research Fellow, Kellogg School of Management, '17-21
Zifang Liu
Post-Baccalaureate Research Fellow, Kellogg School of Management '21-22
Suman Kalyan Maity
Post-Doctoral Fellow, Kellogg School of Management, '18-21
Minsu Park
Research Fellow, Kellogg School of Management, '19-20
Yang Wang
Visiting Professor, Kellogg School of Management, '18
Researcher Network
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Pierre Azoulay
Professor of Technological Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Strategic Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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Albert Laszlo-Barabisi
Robert Gray Doge Professor of Network Science, Northeastern University
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Nicola Bianchi
Assistant Professor, Kellogg School of Management
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Jillian Chown
Associate Professor of Management & Organizations, Kellogg School of Management
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Jeanneate Colvyas
Associate Professor of Human Development and Social Policy and Associate Professor of Learning Sciences, Northwestern University, Associate Professor and Executive Board Member, Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO), Associate Professor of Management & Operations, Kellogg School of Management (Courtesy)
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Noshir Contractor
Professor of Behavioral Sciences, Kellogg School of Management and McCormick School of Engineering
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Leslie Dechurch
Professor of Communication Studies, Northwestern School of Communication
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Ying Ding
Bill & Luis Suit Professor, School of Information
Adjunct Professor at Department of Health, Dell Medical School, University of Texas at Austin -
Eli Finkel
Professor of Management & Organizations, Kellogg School of Management / Professor of Psychology, Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences
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Steve Franconeri
Professor of Psychology, Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences / Professor of Design, McCormick School of Engineering (Courtesy) / Director, Northwestern Cognitive Science Program, Professor of Leadership, Kellogg School of Management (Courtesy)
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C. Lee Giles
David Reese Professor, College of Information Sciences and Technology, Pennsylvania State University
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Jason Hartline
Associate Professor of Computer Science, McCormick School of Engineering
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Danqi Hu
Assistant Professor of Accounting Information & Management, Kellogg School of Management
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Nour Kteily
Professor, Management and Organizations, Kellogg School of Management
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Vincent Lariviere
Professor of Information Science, University of Montreal
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Han Liu
Associate Professor of Statistics and Computer Science, McCormick School of Engineering
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Robert McDonald
Professor of Finance and Gaylord Freeman Distinguished Chair in Banking, Kellogg School of Management
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Filippo Mezzanotti
Assistant Professor of Finance, Kellogg School of Management
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Sam Molyneux
GM, Meta, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
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William Ocasio
James F. Towey Professor of Business and Leadership and Director, Illinois Strategic Organization Initiative
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Adam Pah
Clinical Assistant Professor of Management & Organizations, Kellogg School of Management, Associate Director, Research Assistant Professor, Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
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Dimitris Papanikolaou
Professor of Finance, Kellogg School of Management
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Hatim Rahman
Assistant Professor, Management and Organizations, Kellogg School of Management
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Iyad Rahwan
Director, Max Planck Institute for Human Development
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Luis Rayo
Erwin P. Nemmers Professor of Strategy, Kellogg School of Management
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Lauren Rivera
Associate Professor of Management & Organizations, Kellogg School of Management
Associate Professor of Sociology, Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences (Courtesy) -
Nicole Stephens
Associate Professor of Management & Organizations, Kellogg School of Management
Associate Professor of Psychology, Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences (Courtesy) -
Roberta Sinatra
Associate Professor, IT University of Copenhagen
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H. Eugene Stanley
Professor of Physics, Boston University
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Jie Tang
Professor, Computer Science and Technology, Tsinghua University
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Lav Varshney
Associate Professor, University of Illinois
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Ludo Waltman
Professor of Quantitative Science Studies, Leiden University
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Kuansan Wang
Managing Director, Microsoft Research Outreach
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Adam Waytz
Professor of Management & Organizations, Kellogg School of Management
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Jevin West
Associate Professor, University of Washington
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Teresa K. Woodruff
Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs at Michigan State University
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Hyejin Youn
Associate Professor of Management & Organizations, Kellogg School of Management
Core Administration Team
Krisztina Eleki
Associate Director of Administration for the Kellogg Center for Science of Science and Innovation (CSSI)
Krisztina directs the Center's administrative, operational, financial, and business functions in support of CSSI's research programs and mission. In her position, Krisztina is also responsible for developing and managing grants, planning and executing events, and collaborating with internal and external stakeholders in the science of science arena.
Jenna Pawlicki
Program Coordinator for the Kellogg Center for Science of Science and Innovation (CSSI).
Jenna handles the day-to-day administrative and financial operations of the center. She also collaborates with CSSI team members in coordinating events and managing communication channels.