Sune Lehmann Jørgensen receives DKK 6,979,125 from VILLUM FONDEN’s Young Investigator Programme to his project "High Resolution Networks."
Assistant professor Sune Lehmann Jørgensen at Cognitive Systems, DTU Informatics, is one of 15 researchers granted by VILLUM FONDEN’s Young Investigator Programme in 2012, where a total of 75 m DKK were given.
Abstract: High Resolution Networks
Former Google CEO, Eric Schmidt recently noted: There was 5 exabytes of information created between the dawn of civilization through 2003, but that much information is now created every 2 days, and the pace is increasing [1]. This massive increase in the rate of data collection, has opened up the new possibilities for quantitative investigations of human behavior. In this context, a key to understanding complex systems of interacting objects is the field of network theory.
The overarching goal of the proposal is to take advantage of the recent technological developments in order to push the current boundaries of a quantitatively based understanding of social systems. Specifically, our aim is to record the network of social interactions with very high resolution (both in terms of temporal sampling and number of recorded communication channels) and develop mathematical approaches to describe and understand this highly complex and dynamic network. We will record data using smartphones as sensors. Smartphone sensors enable us to a variety of communication channels, e.g. face-to-face via bluetooth, geolocation via GPS, social network data (Facebook, Twitter) via Apps, and telecommunication data via call logs. In addition to this overall goal, the proposed project consists of a number of specific elements, which will support and inform our efforts to formulate a theoretical framework.
Incomplete data and sampling. The significance of having access to only a small fraction of the full data in a networked system is poorly understood at present. We will use our findings from this high-resolution sample as a tool to understand much larger ‘low resolution’ data sets describing millions of individuals and billions of interactions.
Information stored in relationships. We know, in a casual sense, that it is possible to learn about a person by the company she keeps. We show that we can quantify this notion in a social network and we study to what extent our behavioral patterns are encoded in our social relations.
Influence in social systems. We wish to study how influence spreads in social systems, which is a problematic issue in most datasets. Our experimental setup allows us to probe causal issues by running controlled interventions; we will be able to run field experiments to test our hypotheses.
Privacy in the context of Social Networks. We explore the question of privacy and develop novel strategies to ensure that our research (and the research of others working on similar topics) does not violate the individual’s right to privacy.
([1] Quoted at the Techonomy Confererence (Lake Tahoe CA, USA) on August 4th, 2010).
VILLUM FONDEN’s Young Investigator Programme supports highly talented young Danish researchers in the field of science and technology with ambitions to establish their independent research. Read more about VILLUM FONDEN´s Young Investigator Programme.