Sonic Lab at Northwestern University

10/15/2026

Proud to share that SONIC's Noshir Contractor delivered a Keynote lecture at the 2026 Conference on Complex Systems in Binghamton this week. His lecture, "Engineering the Teams that Solve Complex Problems," explored ways to develop complexity science based strategies to improve teamwork dynamics.

09/25/2026

SONIC would like to draw your attention to a new publication by our team, Leveraging team formation with social networks: The My Dream Team recommendation system

This publication is coauthored by Diego Gomez-Zara, Anup Sawant, Xiang Li, Marlon Twyman, Noshir Contractor, and Leslie DeChurch

Abstract:
We introduce My Dream Team (MDT), an interactive web application that uses a recommendation system to help participants assemble teams and learn how social network dynamics influence team formation. The system operationalizes foundational social network principles to illustrate how differences in relational configuration and structural position shape teaming decisions and outcomes. Participants create profiles, report prior relationships, search for potential teammates, and send invitations to form teams. These relationships influence both algorithmic team suggestions and participants’ own choices, allowing participants to observe whether they favor familiar, densely connected contacts or reach across structural boundaries to less embedded contacts. In classroom and workshop activities, MDT serves as a pedagogical tool for exploring how individuals navigate the trade-off between network comfort zones and opportunities afforded by broader, weaker connections. Drawing on more than 30 sessions with over 1,000 participants, we describe how MDT helps participants develop a tangible understanding of network structures and their effects on group composition, information access, and collaborative opportunities. This web application is free, and instructors can configure accounts for their students and participants.

Find the publication here:

09/22/2026

SONIC would like to draw your attention to a new publication by our team, Six degrees of separation: An interactive teaching activity for social networks.

This publication is coauthored by Noshir Contractor, Kyosuke Tanaka, Neelam Modi Jain, and Harshad Gado.

The six degrees of separation (6-DoS) activity is an interactive web-based exercise that enables participants to experience a key concept in social network analysis: cognitive social structures (CSS). Our perception of who knows whom in a network is a powerful enabler of leveraging and contributing to it. In this 3–5-min network-routing activity (30–60 min from setup to debrief), each participant selects a set of contacts and delivers a message to a designated target to whom they are indirectly connected. The message is relayed through intermediaries, mirroring Milgram’s (1967) small-world experiment, which surprisingly showed that short chains of acquaintances connect most individuals. This process illustrates foundational network concepts beyond CSS, including indirect ties, network paths, and how structural positions shape information flow. By engaging in 6-DoS, participants gain an experiential understanding of how their choice of contacts and their network awareness – or lack of it – shapes efficient information seeking and dissemination. The debriefing extends these insights to broader concepts, including the small-world phenomenon, brokerage, redundancy, and communication strategies. 6-DoS is adaptable for diverse educational contexts, from undergraduate and graduate courses in social networks, management, and communication to professional development and corporate onboarding. Because it is easy to set up, requires no specialized equipment, and can be completed quickly, 6-DoS is well-suited to both in-person and virtual environments. By blending playful interaction with conceptual rigor, 6-DoS transforms abstract network concepts into a concrete, shared experience so that learners do not just understand how networks work – they feel it.

Find the publication here:

The six degrees of separation (6-DoS) activity is an interactive web-based exercise that enables participants to experience a key concept in social...

05/14/2026

05/14/2026

The 2026 Lambert ANN SONIC NICO workshop was an incredible meeting of interdisciplinary scholars asking provocative questions, generating insights and future directions for scientists on how to reimagine human-centered computing research in the age of AI.

05/13/2026

The Kellogg Global Hub is a lively place this week as the 2026 Lambert ANN SONIC NICO Workshop: Reimagining Human-Centered Computing Research in the Age of AI gets underway, running May 12–14 in Rooms L-120 (Wednesday) and 5101 (Thursday) at 2211 Campus Drive, Evanston.

AI is changing how researchers ask questions, gather evidence, and build knowledge across computer science and the social sciences. Over three days, around 40 leading scholars and practitioners are coming together to explore what that means for human-centered computing — where the field is headed, what new research questions are emerging, and how cross-disciplinary collaborations can move things forward.

The program features talks, panels, and working discussions on AI's role in scientific inquiry, human-centered design, and evolving research methods, all focused on shaping the next chapter of human-AI collaboration in research.

This is the 12th gathering in the ANN-SONIC workshop series, co-hosted by SONIC at Northwestern and the Annenberg Networks Network at USC.

More info here: https://www.nico.northwestern.edu/lambert-ann-sonic-nico-workshop/

03/04/2026

We’re excited to spotlight Creative Agency in the Age of AI, happening Friday, March 6, from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. at the Frances Searle Building, Center for Human-Computer Interaction + Design (Room 1-122), 2240 Campus Drive.

As AI tools become collaborators in writing, research, music, design, and movement, they are reshaping what it means to be creative. This event brings together researchers and artists to examine an important question: how can we ensure AI supports human creativity without diminishing human agency?

Throughout the day, participants will explore how AI can influence creative decision-making, teamwork, interface design, and the future of human-AI collaboration across the arts and beyond. The program will feature demos, panels, interdisciplinary discussion, and a speed-writing session focused on imagining more empowering futures for creative work. We’re especially proud to see this event organized by Duri Long, Noshir Contractor, and Karan Ahuja.

More info: https://www.hci.northwestern.edu/news-events/colloquia-special-events/hci-d-ai-symposia-2026/creative-agency-in-the-age-of-ai.html

02/17/2026

Proud to share that three Northwestern undergraduates—Shraeya Iyer, Jeffrey Tu, and Isabel Su—will be presenting at NetSciX (Feb 17–20, 2026) in New Zealand. Their paper is based on research supported by the Buffett Center and the Undergraduate Research Scholarship (Roberta Buffett Institute for Global Affairs).

Talk: A Multiplex Lens on Influencer Performance, Group Synergy, and Network Centralization (https://openreview.net/pdf?id=fTdi2HJTxR)

Co-authors: Megan Chan, Noshir Contractor

Conference details: https://netscix2026.github.io/

Congratulations to Shraeya, Jeffrey, and Isabel on representing Northwestern and sharing their work with the network science community!

02/11/2026

Excited to share our new article in Research Policy with Noshir Contractor, Pamela Hinds, Aaron Schecter, and Elisa Mattarelli. We found that in open innovation communities, it's not just who gives you feedback — it's who they're connected to. Ideas that receive feedback from well-connected contributors gain visibility, legitimacy, and alignment that boost their innovation potential. We call this "secondhand social capital," and it turns out to be a stronger predictor of idea quality than traditional network measures.

Check it out:

02/03/2026

SIAM News just published new work by Diego Gómez Zará and Noshir Contractor on:

Can AI help build teams that are both more representative and more effective—without removing human choice?

They frame team formation as multi-objective optimization, balancing variety (skills/backgrounds) with familiarity (existing ties), using NSGA-II to generate a Pareto set of strong tradeoffs rather than a single “best” team.

In a large-scale MyDreamTeam experiment (380+ participants), creativity was highest when people retained agency in choosing teammates while the system provided representation-aware recommendations—positioning AI as a structured nudge that broadens collaboration rather than replacing human judgment.

Read Here: https://www.siam.org/publications/siam-news/articles/can-artificial-intelligence-help-build-better-more-representative-teams/