Mohammad Mahdian
Social Network Research in the Age of Computation

Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Building 3 Auditorium - 10:30 AM
(Coffee at 10:00 AM)

The development of large online social systems in recent years has made it possible to observe and collect data on the behavior of individuals and their interactions. This has given rise to a new area of interdisciplinary research between computer science, sociology, and economics, seeking to study the dynamics of interactions among individuals in a society, build mathematical models for the evolution of social networks defined by such interactions and their role in the spread of information or modes of behavior, and understand how these models can be used to spread information through a social network or induce people to behave in a certain way. In this talk, I will give a high-level overview of research in this area, and then focus on models for diffusion in social networks, and the problem of distinguishing social influence from correlation. The results will be evaluated using real social network data from networks such as flickr or twitter.

Mohammad Mahdian received a B.S. degree in computer engineering from Sharif University of Technology in 1997, an M.S. degree in computer science from University of Toronto in 2000, and a Ph.D. degree in mathematics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2004. He has worked as an intern and a postdoctoral researcher at IBM Research Labs and Microsoft Research, and is currently a Senior Research Scientist at Yahoo! Research Lab in Santa Clara, CA. His current research interests include algorithm design, algorithmic economics, and applications in online advertising and social networks.

IS&T Colloquium Committee Host: Nargess Memarsadeghi

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