[Colloquium] Talk by Tanzeem Choudhury, Dartmouth on February 24, 2010

[Katie Casey]

DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

Date: Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Time: 2:30 p.m.
Place: Ryerson 251, 1100 E. 58th Street

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Speaker:	Tanzeem Choudhury

From:		Dartmouth

Web page:	http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~tanzeem

Title: Spoken Networks: Analyzing face-to-face conversations and how they shape our social connections

Abstract: With the proliferation of sensor-rich mobile devices, it is becoming increasingly easy to collect data that capture the real-world social interactions of entire groups of people. These new data sets provide opportunities to study the social networks of people as they are observed “in the wild.” However, the traditional methods of social network analysis are often inadequate for such behavioral data. Most existing techniques apply only to static, binary data. Social networks derived from behavioral data will almost always be temporal and will often have finer grained observations about interactions as opposed to simple binary indicators. Thus, new techniques are needed that can take into account variable tie intensities and the dynamics of a network as it evolves in time. In this talk, I will provide an overview of the computational framework we have developed for modeling the micro-level dynamics of human interactions as well as the macro-level network structure and its dynamics from local, noisy sensor observations. Furthermore, by studying the micro and macro levels simultaneously we are able to link dyad-level interaction dynamics (local behavior) to network-level prominence (a global property). I will conclude by providing some specific examples of how the methods we have developed can be applied more broadly to better understand and enhance the lives of people.

Bio:	Tanzeem Choudhury is an assistant professor in the computer science department at Dartmouth. She joined Dartmouth in 2008 after four years at Intel Research Seattle. She received her PhD from the Media Laboratory at MIT. Tanzeem develops systems that can reason about human activities, interactions, and social networks in everyday environments. Tanzeem’s doctoral thesis demonstrated for the first time the feasibility of using wearable sensors to capture and model social networks automatically, on the basis of face-to-face conversations. MIT Technology Review recognized her as one of the world's top 35 innovators under the age of 35 (2008 TR35) for her work in this area. Tanzeem has also been selected as a TED Fellow and is a recipient of the NSF CAREER award. More information can be found at Tanzeem's webpage: http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~tanzeem
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Host:	Anne Rogers
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