Author: William Kennedy

CSS Seminar
Friday, April 13
3-4pm
Center for Social Complexity/3rd floor Research Hall

The CSS seminar speaker for Friday, April 13th will be André L’Huillier, CSS PhD Candidate. André’s talk is entitled “Hype and Conquer: A Computational Model about Winning in the Platform Wars” (abstract below). The talk will be followed by a Q&A session along with light refreshments.

Abstract: Platform business models like Ali-Baba or Google are disrupting many industries while displaying a “winner-takes-all” behavior. The disruption has been increasing during the last decade thanks to the digital revolution. Although the digital transition is relatively new and is catalyzing the creation of platform markets, it is not new for the video game market. The game industry has dealt with platform dynamics since its very beginnings during the mid 70’s. This long history allows the study of its overall life cycle and the individual cycles of platform generations (a set of competing platforms with similar technology), and specific platforms or games. Understanding how a blockbuster emerges in the market provides insight into the behavior of current and near-future developments of platforms. Uneven competition and its volatility of multi-sided organization have captured the attention of economists and entrepreneurs; specifically, they have focused on the “launching problem” and achieving critical mass adoption. Depending on the goods and services, uncertainty on a product’s performance may force actors to prioritize indicators such as trust and perceived quality. In the case of the video game industry, producers and consumers actions lead towards a “winner-takes-all” or “winner-takes-most” structure. Within the video game market, only a handful of consoles and games emerge as blockbusters and sustain cultural and financial dominance. I will present a computational model that portrays the home console industry as a multi-sided market based on platform economics and individual level social influence and decision making. A rule-based model is presented to reproduce the main behavior of different heterogeneous actors, allowing to understand the moving parts of platforms’ blockbuster emergence. The model studies the influence of mass media and peer-to-peer information in platform and software adoption; focusing on the networked diffusion of information and indirect network effects of actors’ decisions.

This session will be live-streamed on the newly created CSS program YouTube channel. For announcements regarding this and future streams, please join the CSS/CDS student and alumni Facebook group.

For a list of upcoming and previous seminars, please visit our calendar.

• *The programs and services offered by George Mason University are open to all who seek them. George Mason does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, ethnic national origin (including shared ancestry and/or ethnic characteristics), sex, disability, military status (including veteran status), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, pregnancy status, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by law. After an initial review of its policies and practices, the university affirms its commitment to meet all federal mandates as articulated in federal law, as well as recent executive orders and federal agency directives.

Friday, March 23
3pm
Center for Social Complexity

The CSS seminar speaker for Friday, March 23 will be Ryan Zelnio, Ph.D., Chief Analytics Officer, Office of Naval Research. Dr. Zelnio’s talk entitled “The Creation of the Office of Naval Research’s Data & Analytics Lab” (abstract below) is scheduled to begin at 3:00 in the Center for Social Complexity Suite located on the 3rd floor of Research Hall. The talk will be followed by a Q&A session along with light refreshments.

Abstract: The Office of Naval Research (ONR) coordinates, executes, and promotes the science and technology programs of the United States Navy and Marine Corps. It administers the Naval Research Enterprise (NRE) investment portfolio of $2B annually in Naval relevant science and technologies (S&T) ranging from basic research to technology prototyping. This portfolio covers over 3000 grant and contract awards annually over a large variety of technologies. In FY2017 alone, the basic and applied research portfolio (which is less than 50% of its budget) funded 4,411 scientific articles, 2,732 conference papers, 343 theses, 204 books & book chapters and 88 patents. However, while this portfolio is large, it is a drop in the bucket within the global research & development (R&D) enterprise. In an attempt to understand this vast amount of data being produced both within the NRE and globally, ONR recently stood up the Data & Analytics Lab. Its mission is to support strategic decision making at the Office of Naval Research with in-depth analysis of the NRE portfolio to enhance mission effectiveness for U.S. Naval Forces. This new lab is led by Mr. Matt Poe and includes Dr. Ryan Zelnio (2013 GMU SPP grad) serving as the Chief Analytics Officer and LCDR Nick Benes serving as the Chief Data Officer. This lab seeks to harness ONR’s investments in social network analysis, machine learning, natural language processing, data visualization, supervised and unsupervised clustering, and many other data science tools to support decision processes across the NRE. Their talk will cover the range of challenges facing their lab as they stand up their effort and discuss the broader move within the federal government to better apply the tools of data science to understand the complexity of the R&D enterprise. They will also discuss future partnering and internship opportunities.

For a list of upcoming and previous seminars, please visit our calendar.

• *The programs and services offered by George Mason University are open to all who seek them. George Mason does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, ethnic national origin (including shared ancestry and/or ethnic characteristics), sex, disability, military status (including veteran status), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, pregnancy status, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by law. After an initial review of its policies and practices, the university affirms its commitment to meet all federal mandates as articulated in federal law, as well as recent executive orders and federal agency directives.

The CSS seminar speaker for Friday, February 9 will be Matthew Oldham, CSS PhD Student, Department of Computational and Data Sciences. The program will begin at 3:00 in the Center for Social Complexity Suite located on the 3rd floor of Research Hall. The talk will be followed by a Q&A session along with light refreshments.

This session will be live-streamed on the newly created CSS program YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7YCR-pBTZ_9865orDNVHNA

For announcements regarding this and future streams, please join the CSS/CDS student and alumni Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/257383120973297/

For a list of upcoming and previous seminars, please visit: https://cos.gmu.edu/cds/calendar/

We hope to see you on Friday, February 9.

Abstract: Sports analytics (SA) has experienced a meteoritic rise in recent years, with the trend forecast to continue. Modor Intelligence reports that the market was valued at USD 83.56 million in 2015, and is forecast to grow to USD 447.23 million by 2020. at the market was valued at USD 83.56 million in 2015, and is forecast to grow to USD 447.23 million by 2020.

The growth of sports analytics has raised a rich variety of research topics pertaining to basketball, including: how at the macro level the distribution of scoring activity is a mixture of random walk processes and power-law behavior (Gabel & Redner, 2012), and, at the individual level, the question of whether players develop hot-hands and how the player and their teammates react to its possible existence. While the erroneous belief regarding hot-hands was first identified by Gilovich, Vallone & Tversky (1985) it has remained an active field of research (Bar-Eli, Avugos, & Raab, 2006).

Agent-based modeling (ABM) has great potential to assist and inform those engaged in sports analytics but to date it has not been utilized. The advantage of ABM is that it allows researchers to assess, in a silicon laboratory, the micro-level interactions that give rise to verifiable macro outcomes. This is achieved through heterogeneous agents adapting and making decisions based on their environment, including considering spatial, temporal factors and interactions with other agents.

To support the use of ABM in sports analytics, I will present a 3-dimensional model of a basketball game, where the fundamentals of play including player and court positions, a shot clock, and shooting performance are all included. Additionally, player behavior in deciding whether to shoot, pass or dribble is partially predicated on assessing the length of a player’s shooting streak (designed to test the hot-hand effect), and the consideration they give to any streak, plus their franchise status, a feature identified in Burns (2004). The probabilistic nature of the model allows for insights into the dynamics of scoring actions following a random walk. The model captures extensive data which was used to calibrate and validate it against comparable statistics from the National Basketball Association (NBA).

• *The programs and services offered by George Mason University are open to all who seek them. George Mason does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, ethnic national origin (including shared ancestry and/or ethnic characteristics), sex, disability, military status (including veteran status), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, pregnancy status, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by law. After an initial review of its policies and practices, the university affirms its commitment to meet all federal mandates as articulated in federal law, as well as recent executive orders and federal agency directives.

Krasnow Seminar
Speaker: Hasan Ayaz (Drexel University)
Monday, 5 February, 2018
4:00-5:00pm
Lecture Room (Room 229)
Krasnow Institute Building
George Mason University, Fairfax, VA

Abstract:

Significant progress has been made over the last decades in understanding the physiological and neural bases of cognitive processes and behavior. The advent of new and improved brain imaging tools, that allow monitoring brain activity in natural environments, is expected to provide a complementary perspective into the relationship of neurophysiological markers. Functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), an emerging brain monitoring technology that relies on optical techniques to detect changes of cortical hemodynamic responses to sensory, motor, or cognitive activation is an ideal candidate tool. Consistent with the neuroergonomic approach, ultra-portable and wireless fNIRS sensors can allow capturing brain at work in naturalistic environments during complex tasks. This presentation will discuss emerging trends for fNIRS applications from aerospace to medicine, with diverse populations and towards clinical life-saving solutions. We will review recent projects such as mental workload assessment of special operators performing standardized and complex cognitive tasks and development of expertise during practice of complex cognitive and visuomotor tasks (ranging from aircraft piloting, robot control to surgical tool use). Various recent synergistic fNIRS applications that put the brain in the loop for human-human and human-machine interaction will be discussed including synthetic speech perception, interpersonal neural synchronization and brain computer interfaces.

• *The programs and services offered by George Mason University are open to all who seek them. George Mason does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, ethnic national origin (including shared ancestry and/or ethnic characteristics), sex, disability, military status (including veteran status), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, pregnancy status, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by law. After an initial review of its policies and practices, the university affirms its commitment to meet all federal mandates as articulated in federal law, as well as recent executive orders and federal agency directives.

The CSS seminar speaker for Friday, December 8, will be William B. Rouse, Ph.D., Alexander Crombie Humphreys Chair, School of Systems and Enterprises, Stevens Institute of Technology. Dr. Rouse’s talk, entitled “Computational Social Science At Several Levels” (abstract below), is scheduled to begin at 3:00 in the Center for Social Complexity Suite located on the 3rd floor of Research Hall. The talk will be followed by a Q&A session and light refreshments.

This session will be live-streamed on the newly created CSS program YouTube channel

For announcements regarding this and future streams, please join the CSS/CDS student and alumni Facebook group

For a list of upcoming and previous seminars, please click here.

We hope to see you on Friday, December 8.

Abstract: Computational social science can enable understanding – and design – of a wide variety of phenomena at an enormous range of levels. This lecture will address processes, organizations, ecosystems, and society for phenomena associated with disease and medicine, health and well being, and technology adoption, particularly in automobiles. The process level is addressed in terms of scaling and optimization of medical innovations. The level of organizations is considered in the context of health provider corporations’ responses to the Affordable Care Act. The ecosystem level is discussed in addressing population health – integrated delivery of health, education, and social services – in the highly fragmented US ecosystem. The society level is considered in terms of the expected disruptive impacts of driverless cars on automotive, insurance, and finance industries. Approaches to and challenges of modeling at these differing levels are discussed.

• *The programs and services offered by George Mason University are open to all who seek them. George Mason does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, ethnic national origin (including shared ancestry and/or ethnic characteristics), sex, disability, military status (including veteran status), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, pregnancy status, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by law. After an initial review of its policies and practices, the university affirms its commitment to meet all federal mandates as articulated in federal law, as well as recent executive orders and federal agency directives.

The CSS seminar speaker for Friday, October 27 will be Dale K Brearcliffe, MAIS-CSS student, George Mason University. Dales’s talk entitled “Parallelization of Entity-Based Models in Computational Social Science: A Hardware Perspective” (abstract below) is scheduled to begin at 3:00 in the Center for Social Complexity Suite located on the 3rd floor of Research Hall. The talk will be followed by a Q&A session along with light refreshments.

These sessions will be live-streamed on the newly created CSS program YouTube channel.

For announcements regarding these and future streams, please join the : CSS/CDS student and alumni Facebook group.

For a list of upcoming and previous seminars, please click here.

Abstract: The use of simulations in exploring theories and hypotheses by social scientists is well documented. As computer systems have grown in capacity, so have interests by social scientists in executing larger simulations. Social scientists often approach their simulation design from the top down by selecting an Entity-Based Model (EBM) framework from those that are readily available, thus limiting modeling capability to the chosen framework. Ultimately, the framework is dependent upon what is at the bottom, the hardware that serves as the foundation of the computing system. One underused hardware architecture supports the simultaneous execution of a problem split into multiple pieces. Thus, the problem is solved faster in parallel. In this seminar, a selection of parallel hardware architectures is examined with a goal of providing support for EBMs. The hardware’s capability to support parallelization of EBMs is described and contrasted. A simple EBM is tested to illustrate these capabilities and implementation challenges specific to parallel hardware are explored.

• *The programs and services offered by George Mason University are open to all who seek them. George Mason does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, ethnic national origin (including shared ancestry and/or ethnic characteristics), sex, disability, military status (including veteran status), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, pregnancy status, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by law. After an initial review of its policies and practices, the university affirms its commitment to meet all federal mandates as articulated in federal law, as well as recent executive orders and federal agency directives.

On Monday, October 30, the Krasnow Seminar series will welcome Jyothi Arikkath from the University of Nebraska Medical Center, who will speak on: Cellular and Molecular Aberrations in Neurodevelopmental Disorders Associated with Autism, Intellectual Disability and Related Disorders

DATE: Monday, 30 October, 2017
TIME: 4:00-5:00pm
LOCATION: Lecture Room (Room 229)
Krasnow Institute Building
George Mason University, Fairfax, VA

Abstract:
Autism spectrum disorders represent a heterogeneous group of neurodevelopmental disorders characterized by deficits in social interaction, communication skills and repetitive behavior. These disorders are often co-morbid with other disorders including intellectual disability. A major challenge in autism and related disorders has been to define cellular and molecular aberrations specifically within different cell types implicated in the pathology and elucidate convergent pathways. Defining the pathological molecular network in autism will likely yield pharmacological targets that will make therapy tractable. Identifying commons themes across various forms of autism has been extremely challenging. The one common theme that has emerged indicates that autism is a “synaptopathy”, a disorder associated with aberrations in synaptic structure and function. Synaptic density and function in neurons can be influenced by signaling pathways in specific types of neurons, astrocytes and microglia. We propose that identifying cell type specific and neuron-type specific molecular aberrations in autism are key to defining the molecular pathology of autism and providing routes for therapy. The central goal of my lab is to take advantage of in vitro and in vivo approaches and genetic mouse models of autism and related disorders and dissect out aberrant cell type specific signaling pathways in neurons, astrocytes and microglia that contribute to synaptic signaling in neurons with the ultimate goal of correcting these aberrations for therapy. Our current focus is on two known genetic causes of autism and related disorders, mutations in the CTNND2 and CDKL5 genes. By dissecting out aberrant signaling pathways in these genetic forms of autism and related disorders, we expect to identify convergent pathways relevant to other forms of autism and related disorders.

• *The programs and services offered by George Mason University are open to all who seek them. George Mason does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, ethnic national origin (including shared ancestry and/or ethnic characteristics), sex, disability, military status (including veteran status), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, pregnancy status, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by law. After an initial review of its policies and practices, the university affirms its commitment to meet all federal mandates as articulated in federal law, as well as recent executive orders and federal agency directives.

CSS Seminar

On Friday, October 20, Peter Revay, CSS PhD Candidate, will present Modeling the Co-Evolution of Culture, Signs and Network Structure: Theory and Applications. In Peter’s words: “I focus on the drivers of diffusion and adoption of cultural traits, such as values, beliefs, and behaviors. I adopt an evolutionary view of cultural dynamics. I use concepts from dual-inheritance theories of cultural evolution to develop and test an agent-based model capable of simulating the changing distributions of cultural traits in a large population of actors over the course of prolonged periods of time. Particularly, I pay close attention to the mechanisms of indirectly biased transmission of traits and guided variation, which are both hypothesized to be significant aspects of cultural dynamics. Indirectly biased transmission consists of the adoption of specific trait variants on the basis of possession of initially unrelated external markers. Guided variation is then individual adaptation driven by self-exploration.

“Furthermore, I make use of large publicly available datasets to validate my models. The first one of these is the database of bill co-authorship in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1973 to 2008. The other is a comprehensive dataset of scientific co-authorship in various disciplines stretching back for over a century.

“The results show that cultural evolution models based on indirectly biased transmission and guided variation are suitable to explaining the dynamics of various complex social networks.”

The talk will begin at 3:00 in the Center for Social Complexity Suite located on the 3rd floor of Research Hall, and be followed by a Q&A session along with light refreshments.

These sessions will be live-streamed on the newly created CSS program YouTube channel.

For announcements regarding these and future streams, please join the : CSS/CDS student and alumni Facebook group.

For a list of upcoming and previous seminars, please click here.

• *The programs and services offered by George Mason University are open to all who seek them. George Mason does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, ethnic national origin (including shared ancestry and/or ethnic characteristics), sex, disability, military status (including veteran status), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, pregnancy status, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by law. After an initial review of its policies and practices, the university affirms its commitment to meet all federal mandates as articulated in federal law, as well as recent executive orders and federal agency directives.

The next Krasnow Institute seminar will be held on Monday, October 16, at 4:00pm in the Krasnow conference room. (Refreshments will precede at 3:30pm).
Prof. Guoqiang Yu from VaTech will speak on the topic of “Modeling and quantification of astrocyte activity from calcium imaging” (abstract below).

TIME: 4:00-5:00pm
LOCATION: Lecture Room (Room 229
Krasnow Institute Building
George Mason University, Fairfax, VA

Abstract: Recent studies have suggested that astrocytes exert proactive regulatory effects on brain information processing and that they are deeply involved in normal brain development and disease pathology. Recording astrocyte activity is now technically feasible, due to recent advances in modern microscopy and ultrasensitive cell-type specific genetically encoded Ca2+ indicators for long-time imaging. However, there is a big gap between the data generation and methods of understanding the data. Indeed, current practice is essentially manual, which not only limits analysis throughput but also risks introducing bias and missing important information latent in complex, dynamic big data. In this talk, I will discuss our recent work on this problem. For those who are interested in biology, I will demonstrate how our work can be used to assist your study of decoding the functional roles of astrocyte in brain. For those who are interested in the algorithm and tool development, I will show you how the astrocyte activity analysis is a booming research area and how the problem can serve as a motivating example for generic algorithm development.

10/10/17

• *The programs and services offered by George Mason University are open to all who seek them. George Mason does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, ethnic national origin (including shared ancestry and/or ethnic characteristics), sex, disability, military status (including veteran status), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, pregnancy status, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by law. After an initial review of its policies and practices, the university affirms its commitment to meet all federal mandates as articulated in federal law, as well as recent executive orders and federal agency directives.

CSS Seminar

On Friday, October 13, Annetta Burger, CSS PhD Candidate, will speak on “Organizing Theories for Disaster Study in Computational Social Science.” Based on evolving understandings of the complex, interconnected characteristics of disasters and social adaptations we propose to organize disaster theories in the interdisciplinary context of complex adaptive systems (CAS). Within this context disasters can be understood to consist of three sets of interacting systems, the socio-ecological system, the system of collective, social behavior, and the individual actor’s cognitive system. Ongoing dynamic forces within each set periodically build to disrupt events and cause failures in the overall system. In this talk, we will explore the dominant theory and frameworks in disaster studies from the perspective of these sets, demonstrate how they explain disasters, and discuss how Computational Social Science methodologies can support theory-building. By identifying evolving understandings and research questions co-located in disaster theory and CAS we find that the CAS features of heterogeneity, flows, interacting subsystems, emergence from self-organization and bottom-up processes, and adaptation and learning are integral to disaster studies.

The talk will begin at 3:00 in the Center for Social Complexity Suite located on the 3rd floor of Research Hall, and be followed by a Q&A session along with light refreshments.

These sessions will be live-streamed on the newly created CSS program YouTube channel.

For announcements regarding these and future streams, please join the : CSS/CDS student and alumni Facebook group.

For a list of upcoming and previous seminars, please click here.

• *The programs and services offered by George Mason University are open to all who seek them. George Mason does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, ethnic national origin (including shared ancestry and/or ethnic characteristics), sex, disability, military status (including veteran status), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, pregnancy status, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by law. After an initial review of its policies and practices, the university affirms its commitment to meet all federal mandates as articulated in federal law, as well as recent executive orders and federal agency directives.