Faculty & Contributors

A Community of Thought Leaders

CSSI is proud to bring together so many top experts in the fields of complex sciences. The core of our team is made up of professors, doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows at the Kellogg School of Management and Northwestern University, but our community of collaborators spans the globe. Here’s a look at the team behind the science of science, as well as key contributors and supporters.

Research Highlights

Discover our faculty's latest explorations in the field of science of science. Published in Kellogg Insight, the Kellogg School of Management's magazine on faculty research and expertise, this collection of work delves into such areas as teamwork, collaboration, innovation, careers, and gender dynamics.

The Center is an extraordinary investment, bringing together world-leading researchers to decode innovation and the progress of knowledge.

Ben Jones / Professor of Strategy and the Gordon and Llura Gund Family Professor of Entrepreneurship

Leadership Network

Dashun Wang, Director

Professor of Management & Organizations / Professor of Industrial Engineering & Management Sciences / Core faculty at Northwestern Institute of Complex Systems (NICO)

Professor Wang’s research focuses on the science of science. He joined the faculty at Kellogg in 2016 after teaching at Pennsylvania State University and leading a big data initiative at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center. He also holds appointments at Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering & Applied Science and NICO.

Luis Amaral

Professor of Chemical & Biological Engineering / Professor of Physics & Astronomy / Co-Director, Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO) Faculty

Professor Amaral conducts and directs research that provides insight into the emergence, evolution and stability of complex social and biological systems. He holds appointments at Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering & Applied Science and the Feinberg School of Medicine.

James Evans

Professor / Director, Knowledge Lab / Faculty Director, Masters Program in Computational Social Science, University of Chicago

Professor Evans’s research focuses on the collective system of thinking and knowing. At the University of Chicago, he is Director of Knowledge Lab, which has collaborative, granting and employment opportunities. Evans also founded and now directs on the Computational Social Science program at Chicago, and sponsors an associated Computational Social Science workshop.

Santo Fortunato

Professor / Director of the Center for Complex Networks and Systems Research, Indiana University

Professor Fortunato’s research areas are network science and computational social science, and aims to detect community structures in networks, analyze and model social and information networks, identify citation patterns, and more. Fortunato joined the faculty at Indiana University in 2016.

Benjamin Jones

Gordon and Llura Gund Family Professor of Entrepreneurship / Professor of Strategy / Faculty Director, Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Kellogg

Professor Jones is faculty director of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Kellogg, which equips leaders to drive the kind of innovation, entrepreneurship and growth that matters in today’s world. His research focuses on innovation and creativity, and he has done work on global economic development, including the roles of education, climate and national leadership in explaining the wealth and poverty of nations.

Brian Uzzi

Richard L. Thomas Professor of Leadership and Organizational Change / Co-Director, Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO) Faculty / Director, Kellogg Architectures of Collaboration Initiative (KACI)

Professor Uzzi is a globally recognized teacher, consultant and speaker on leadership, social networks, data science, artificial intelligence and machine learning. He has lectured and advised companies and governments around the world and has been on or visited the faculties of INSEAD, University of Chicago, University of California at Berkeley and Harvard University.

Researchers

Sirag Erkol

Sirag Erkol

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Kellogg School of Management

Şirag Erkol is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Science of Science and Innovation at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. He has a Ph.D. in Informatics from Indiana University Bloomington and M.S. in Industrial Engineering from Bogazici University. His research interests lie in the science of science and network science. His work focuses on understanding the dynamics of scientific careers and academic networks using varying research methods.

Alexander Furnas

Research Assistant Professor, Kellogg School of Management

Alexander C. Furnas PhD (Zander), is a Research Assistant Professor at the Center for Science of Science and Innovation at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. He has a PhD in political science from the University of Michigan. He researches the political economy of information, with a focus on the production, dissemination and uptake of science and expertise in the policymaking process. His dissertation examines how congressional staffers evaluate and use privately provisioned information produced by outside organizations. He has published articles in the American Political Science Review, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Legislative Studies Quarterly, among others. More generally, he studies the use of information, science, and expertise in policymaking, interest groups, and elite political behavior using survey, text analysis and network methods.

Jian Gao

Research Assistant Professor, Kellogg School of Management

Jian Gao is a Research Assistant Professor in the Center for Science of Science and Innovation (CSSI) at the Kellogg School of Management and the Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO) at Northwestern University. He obtained a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China. His research interests lie in the science of science, computational socioeconomics, network science, and economic complexity. His recent work focuses on measuring the disparities in exposure to artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and estimating the benefits of AI in science and innovation.

Bernard Koch

Bernard Koch

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Kellogg School of Management

Bernard Koch is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Science of Science and Innovation in the Kellogg School of Management. Starting in 2024, he will be an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago. His research is focused on organizational issues in scientific fields (particularly AI research and psychology) and their ethical and epistemic outcomes. He also has interests in cultural evolution, machine learning, and causal inference. His work has been published in NeurIPS, WWW , Soc. Methodology, Soc. Methods & Res, and Science, among other venues.

Zihang Lin

Zihang Lin

PhD Student, McCormick School of Engineering and Kellogg School of Management

Zihang Lin is currently a PhD student in the Department of Industrial Engineering & Management Sciences at the McCormick School of Engineering at Northwestern University, with affiliations at Kellogg Center for Science of Science & Innovation (CSSI) and Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO). His research interests encompass computational social science, science of science, and innovation. Recently, his endeavors have been concentrated on extensive data analyses with advanced machine learning techniques, in a quest to achieve a deeper understanding of science and innovation, specifically focusing on accelerating innovation ecosystems. He attained a B.Sc. degree in computer science from Fudan University in 2023.

Rui Pan

Pre-Doctoral Fellow, Kellogg School of Management

 

Rui Pan is a Pre-Doctoral Fellow at the Center for Science of Science and Innovation (CSSI) at the Kellogg School of Management. She is currently an MA candidate in Computational Social Science at the University of Chicago, with affiliations at the Knowledge Lab. She completed her bachelor's degree in Economics and Philosophy at Peking University in 2020. Her research interests lie in understanding team collaboration and innovation with computational methods, including content analysis, social network analysis, and experiments. She is actively seeking an opportunity as a Ph.D. student starting in Fall 2023.

Yifan Qian

Research Assistant Professor, Kellogg School of Management

Yifan Qian is a Research Assistant Professor at the Center for Science of Science and Innovation at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. His current research focus is the science of science and combines theories and methods from network science, machine learning, data science, and sociology. By leveraging large-scale datasets encompassing scientific funding, publications, societal impacts, and confidential university data on technology transfer and grant applications, his current work aims to broaden our definition and measurement of innovations while identifying new gaps and opportunities for innovations at research institutions.

Erzhuo Shao

PhD Student, McCormick School of Engineering

Erzhuo Shao is a Ph.D. Candidate at the McCormick School of Engineering, majoring in Industrial Engineering & Management Sciences. His research interests lie in computational social science, complex networks, and machine learning. He received a B.Eng. degree and an M.Sc. in Electronic Engineering from Tsinghua University. He also received an M.S.E from Johns Hopkins University.

Giorgio Tripodi

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Kellogg School of Management

 

Giorgio Tripodi is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Science of Science and Innovation at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. He received a Ph.D. in Data Science from Scuola Normale Superiore (Pisa, Italy). He was previously a research fellow at Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna (Pisa, Italy) and a visiting scholar at the Center for Science of Science and Innovation (CSSI) and the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University (‘20). His research interests lie at the intersection between science of science, network science, and economics of innovation, focusing on climate-related technologies and how innovators move and interact in the knowledge space. He received an M.Sc. in economics from Bocconi University in 2015

Binglu Wang

Pre-Doctoral Research Fellow, Kellogg School of Management

Binglu Wang is a Ph.D. student in Management & Organizations (MORS) at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, with affiliations at the Center for Science of Science and Innovation (CSSI) and the Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO). Her research involves computational social science, technology & innovation, and social networks, with a focus on understanding how community collapses from large-scale datasets. She received her bachelor's degree in information management and information system from Peking University in 2019.

Yifang Wang

Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, Kellogg School of Management

Yifang Wang is currently a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Center for Science of Science (CSSI) and Innovation (CSSI) at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. Her research interests lie broadly in visual analytics and data storytelling, especially in the fields of computational social science and digital humanities. Before that, she obtained a Ph.D. degree in computer science from The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST, 2022) and a B.Eng. degree in software engineering from Zhejiang University (ZJU, 2018).

Sijia Wei

Post-Doctoral Fellow, Kellogg School of Management

Sijia Wei is a Post-doctoral Fellow in the Integrated Health Services and Outcomes Research Fellowship Program at the Center for Education in Health Sciences, Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University. She earned her Ph.D. in Nursing Science from Duke University and is a registered nurse and public health nurse with clinical experience in community-based health care services (i.e., long-term care, home health care, rehabilitation, and hospice). Her research focuses on care coordination processes in care transitions across settings and over time by evaluating relational processes and social mechanisms essential to care coordination using social network analysis and large datasets such as electronic health records. She seeks to understand the complex systemic drivers of health disparities for adults with chronic illnesses and disabilities in the community and aims to improve care efficiency, health equity, and patient outcomes by enhancing care coordination processes.

Diana Amirbekova

Diana Amirbekova

Visiting Scholar, Kellogg School of Management

Diana Amirbekova is a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Science of Science and Innovation at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. Diana has a Ph.D. in Management from Kazakh British Technical University. She is currently a holder of the research scholarship awarded by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of Kazakhstan.  Her research interests lie in scientometrics, science of science and knowledge management. Her work focuses on research productivity, science development and research policies in Kazakhstan. 

ALUMNI


Yian Yin

Research Assistant Professor, Kellogg School of Management, '22-23
First Appointment: Assistant Professor at Cornell University


Seokkyun Woo

Post-Doctoral Fellow, Kellogg School of Management, '22-23
First Appointment: Assistant Professor at Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology (KAIST)


Taegyoon Kim

Post-Doctoral Fellow, Kellogg School of Management, '22-23
First Appointment: Assistant Professor at Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology (KAIST)


Wenyuan Liu

Post-Doctoral Fellow, Kellogg School of Management, '21-23
First Placement: Geophysicist at CGG


Nima Dehmamy

Research Assistant Professor, Kellogg School of Management, '19-22
First Placement: Research Staff Member at IBM


Diego Gómez-Zará

Post-Doctoral Fellow, Kellogg School of Management, '21-'22
First Appointment: Assistant Professor, University of Notre Dame


Woo Seong Jo

Post-Doctoral Fellow, Kellogg School of Management, '19-20
First Placement: Samsung Economic Research Institute


Zihang Lin

Visiting Pre-Doctoral Research Fellow, Kellogg School of Management '21-22

Current: PhD student, McCormick School of Engineering, CSSI


Lu Liu

PhD student, Pennsylvania State University and visiting predoctoral student at CSSI and NICO
First Placement: Data Scientist at Robinhood


Zifang Liu

Post-Baccalaureate Research Fellow, Kellogg School of Management '21-22


Suman Kalyan Maity

Post-Doctoral Fellow, Kellogg School of Management, '18-21
First Appointment: Assistant Professor at Missouri S&T


Minsu Park

Research Fellow, Kellogg School of Management, '19-20 
First Appointment: Assistant professor, NYU-Abu Dhabi


Yang Wang

Visiting Professor, Kellogg School of Management, '18
First Appointment: Full professor, Xi’an Jiaotong University (China)


Lingfei Wu

First Appointment: Assistant professor, iSchool, University of Pittsburgh

Researcher Network

  • Pierre Azoulay

    Professor of Technological Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Strategic Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  • Albert Laszlo-Barabisi

    Robert Gray Doge Professor of Network Science, Northeastern University

  • Nicola Bianchi

    Assistant Professor, Kellogg School of Management

  • Jillian Chown

    Associate Professor of Management & Organizations, Kellogg School of Management

  • Jeanneate Colvyas

    Associate Professor of Human Development and Social Policy and Associate Professor of Learning Sciences, Northwestern University, Associate Professor and Executive Board Member, Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO), Associate Professor of Management & Operations, Kellogg School of Management (Courtesy)

  • Noshir Contractor

    Professor of Behavioral Sciences, Kellogg School of Management and McCormick School of Engineering

  • Leslie Dechurch

    Professor of Communication Studies, Northwestern School of Communication

  • Ying Ding

    Bill & Luis Suit Professor, School of Information
    Adjunct Professor at Department of Health, Dell Medical School, University of Texas at Austin

  • Eli Finkel

    Professor of Management & Organizations, Kellogg School of Management / Professor of Psychology, Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences

  • Steve Franconeri

    Professor of Psychology, Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences / Professor of Design, McCormick School of Engineering (Courtesy) / Director, Northwestern Cognitive Science Program, Professor of Leadership, Kellogg School of Management (Courtesy)

  • C. Lee Giles

    David Reese Professor, College of Information Sciences and Technology, Pennsylvania State University

  • Jason Hartline

    Associate Professor of Computer Science, McCormick School of Engineering

  • Danqi Hu

    Assistant Professor of Accounting Information & Management, Kellogg School of Management

  • Nour Kteily

    Professor, Management and Organizations, Kellogg School of Management

  • Vincent Lariviere

    Professor of Information Science, University of Montreal

  • Han Liu

    Associate Professor of Statistics and Computer Science, McCormick School of Engineering

  • Robert McDonald

    Professor of Finance and Gaylord Freeman Distinguished Chair in Banking, Kellogg School of Management

  • Filippo Mezzanotti

    Assistant Professor of Finance, Kellogg School of Management

  • Sam Molyneux

    GM, Meta, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative

  • William Ocasio

    James F. Towey Professor of Business and Leadership and Director, Illinois Strategic Organization Initiative

  • Adam Pah

    Clinical Assistant Professor of Management & Organizations, Kellogg School of Management, Associate Director, Research Assistant Professor, Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)

  • Dimitris Papanikolaou

    Professor of Finance, Kellogg School of Management

  • Hatim Rahman

    Assistant Professor, Management and Organizations, Kellogg School of Management

  • Iyad Rahwan

    Director, Max Planck Institute for Human Development

  • Luis Rayo

    Erwin P. Nemmers Professor of Strategy, Kellogg School of Management

  • Lauren Rivera

    Associate Professor of Management & Organizations, Kellogg School of Management
    Associate Professor of Sociology, Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences (Courtesy)

  • Roberta Sinatra

    Associate Professor, IT University of Copenhagen

  • H. Eugene Stanley

    Professor of Physics, Boston University

  • Nicole Stephens

  • Associate Professor of Management & Organizations, Kellogg School of Management / Associate Professor of Psychology, Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences (Courtesy)

  • Thomas Stoeger

  • Assistant Professor, Department of Medicine, Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care, Northwestern University / Potocsnak Longevity Institute, Simpson Querrey Lung Institute for Translational Science, Northwestern University 

  • Jie Tang

    Professor, Computer Science and Technology, Tsinghua University

  • Lav Varshney

    Associate Professor, University of Illinois

  • Ludo Waltman

    Professor of Quantitative Science Studies, Leiden University

  • Kuansan Wang

    Managing Director, Microsoft Research Outreach

  • Adam Waytz

    Professor of Management & Organizations, Kellogg School of Management

  • Jevin West

    Associate Professor, University of Washington

  • Teresa K. Woodruff

    Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs at Michigan State University

  • Hyejin Youn

    Associate Professor of Management & Organizations, Kellogg School of Management

Core Administration Team

Krisztina Eleki

Krisztina Eleki

Associate Director of Administration for the Kellogg Center for Science of Science and Innovation (CSSI)

Krisztina directs the Center's administrative, operational, financial, and business functions in support of CSSI's research programs and mission. In her position, Krisztina is also responsible for developing and managing grants, planning and executing events, and collaborating with internal and external stakeholders in the science of science arena.

Alyse Freilich

Senior Academic Editor for the Kellogg Center for Science of Science and Innovation (CSSI).

Alyse is responsible for a variety of writing and editing projects for CSSI, including research papers, grant proposals and reports, and general communications. She collaborates with researchers to convey scientific information in an engaging and accessible way.


Program Coordinator for the Kellogg Center for Science of Science and Innovation (CSSI).

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