Participants

Dr. Elisa Baek (she/her/hers)

Elisa Baek is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at USC. She completed her B.A., M.A., and Ph.D., at the University of Pennsylvania and her postdoctoral training at UCLA. Elisa draws from methods and approaches from social psychology, neuroscience, network science, and communication to study what helps people feel socially connected to one another. Some of the ongoing lines of work in her lab investigates the neural and behavioral tendencies that distinguish well-connected and lonely individuals, the neural and psychological drivers of information sharing, and the neural correlates of social influence.

Dr. Ignacio Cruz (he/him/his)

Ignacio Fernandez Cruz is an Assistant Professor of Communication at Northwestern University’s School of Communication. His research examines how digital technologies, specifically AI, are put into practice at work. In particular, he focuses on new ways of organizing workflows, shifts in how knowledge is shared, and what forms of expertise are leveraged for AI-aided decision-making. His scholarship has been published across venues in communication studies, management, and information studies. Prior to Northwestern, he was a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow and a Ronald E. McNair Scholar. His work has been supported by the National Science Foundation and fellowships from the University of Southern California and the University of Texas at Austin.

Dr. Hank Green (he/his)

Harold D. Green, Jr. (Hank) Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Indiana University Bloomington School of Public Health Department of Applied Health Science. He is also core faculty of the Indiana University Irsay Institute and Affiliate Faculty of the Indiana University Kinsey Institute and the Indiana University School of Medicine Center for Global Health Equity. Previously he was a Senior Behavioral Scientist and founding Director of the RAND Center for Applied Network Analysis and Systems Science at the RAND Corporation. All of his research focuses on applying social network analysis and network science in the service of public health and wellness. Dr. Green uses network analyses to understand diffusion of information/innovation and the social and cultural determinants of health and health behaviors. Many projects focus on HIV: the impact of loneliness and social isolation on the health and wellness of aging African American men who have sex with men, encouraging medical care providers to prescribe HIV Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis, the propagation of HIV-related mistrust (i.e., conspiracy beliefs) among HIV+ African Americans in Los Angeles; sexual health and sexual risk-taking among men who have sex with men in Beirut; and how social networks are linked to HIV care adherence among HIV+ Ugandans and Botswanans. He has also investigated connections among network structure, network composition, substance use, and risky sexual behavior for homeless women, homeless men, and homeless youth. In addition to his applied work, he has been active in designing and implementing software for the collection of personal network data (EgoWeb and EgoWeb 2.0) and consulting on the development of similar software packages, seeking to answer questions about the impact of missing data on statistical models that link network structure to individual behaviors and attitudes, and applying statistical methodologies for the analysis of personal network data in the context of public health research. His funding sources include the University of California Tobacco Related Disease Research Program, the National Institute for Child and Human Development, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the National Institute on Mental Health, the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute on Allergies and Infectious Diseases, and the MacArthur, Rockefeller, and BHP Foundations. He holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Florida and is an Alumnus of the University of Illinois NIH Training Grant in Quantitative Psychology, of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications Center for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, and of the Science of Networks in Communities Research Group.

Dr. Emilio Ferrara (he/him)

Emilio Ferrara is a professor of computer science and communication at the USC Viterbi Department of Computer Science and USC Annenberg. His research focus has been at the intersection between developing theory and methods for network analysis and applying them to study socio-technical systems and information networks. He is concerned with understanding the implications of technology and communication networks on human behavior, and their effects on society at large. His work spans from studying the web and social networks, to collaboration systems and academic networks, from team science to online crowds.

Dr. Janet Fulk

Janet Fulk is Professor Emerita of Communications in the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, and Professor Emerita of Management and Organization in the Marshall School of Business at University of Southern California. Her research centers on social aspects of knowledge and distributed intelligence, adoption and use of communication technology in organizational settings, and dynamics of online communities. Recent projects examined the social dynamics in crowdsourcing creative commons communities; ecological influences on network tie dissolution in a professional association; and community and network dynamics in a crowdsourcing community for solving social issues. She is a Fellow of The Academy of Management and of the International Communication Association, and she holds lifetime achievement awards from both associations.

Dr. Angel Hsing-Chi Hwang (she/her)

Angel Hsing-Chi Hwang is a Postdoctoral Associate at Cornell University’s Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science and an incoming Assistant Professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. She researches human-AI interaction and its implications on the future of work. Much of her past and present research adopts a creator-centered lens, including co-creation with intelligent agents, the impact of generative AI on the creative industries, and AI-assisted creative production.

Dr. Patrick Janulis (he/him/his)

Dr. Janulis is an Associate Professor in the Department of Medical Social Sciences within the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University. His research focuses on refining the measurement of sexual networks, using this information to improve network based epidemic models of HIV/STIs, and leveraging these models to optimize the impact of prevention interventions. This work includes a particular emphasis on the intersection of substance use, sexual partnership dynamics, and HIV.

Dr. Peter Monge

Peter Monge is Professor Emeritus of Communication at the Annenberg School of Communication and Professor Emeritus of Management and Organization at the Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California. He and Manuel Castells co-founded the Annenberg Networks Network and he served as co-director with Janet Fulk until 2021. He has published five books, including Theories of Communication Networks co-authored with Noshir Contractor, and over 100 journal articles and book chapters in the fields of social networks, organizational communication, information systems and research methods. He served as editor of Communication Research from 1986 to 1993. His work over the years has been supported by a number of funding organizations, including the NSF, the NIH, and NASA. Peter is a fellow and former president of the International Communication Association (1997-1998) and a Distinguished Scholar of the National Communication Association. His work has received numerous awards over the years, including the ICA Steven H. Chaffee Career Achievement Award and the USC Provost’s Mentoring Award.

Dr. Anne Mook (she/her)

Anne Mook earned a PhD in environmental sociology from the University of Florida. She works a senior team scientist in the Institute for Research in the Social Sciences to help develop and promote interdisciplinary team-based projects.

Dr. Andrew Pilny

Andrew Pilny (PhD, 2015, University of Illinois) is an Associate Professor at the University of Kentucky with appointments in Communication, Sociology, and Management. Andrew studies organizational and group behavior from a network perspective.

Dr. Sarah Shugars (they/them/theirs)

Sarah Shugars (they/them/theirs) is an Assistant Professor of Communication at Rutgers University. Their work focuses on how everyday people talk about, engage with, and collectively shape the modern world around them. Bringing together computational social science and the principles of deliberative democracy, they develop new text and network methods for examining the relational nature of public life, the linguistic modes through which people express themselves, and the technological affordances which shape digital discourse. They are a first-generation to college student and are deeply committed to increasing access and equity in higher education. Previously, they worked as a Faculty Fellow at NYU’s Center for Data Science and as a Research Fellow with George Washington University’s School of Media & Public Affairs. They received their PhD in Network Science from Northeastern University.

Dr. Yu Xu (he/him/his)

Yu Xu is an Assistant Professor of Integrated Marketing Communications and (by courtesy) Communication Studies at Northwestern University. His research interests include media industries and analytics, social and communication networks, organizational change, ecology and evolution, and computational social science.