Abstract: The increasing availability of large-scale datasets that trace the entirety of the scientific enterprise, have created an unprecedented opportunity to explore scientific production and reward. Parallel developments in data science, network science, and artificial intelligence offer us powerful tools and techniques to make sense of these millions of data points. Together, they tell a complex yet insightful story about how scientific careers unfold, how collaborations contribute to discovery, and how scientific progress emerges through a combination of multiple interconnected factors. These opportunities—and challenges that come with them—have fueled the emergence of a multidisciplinary community of scientists that are united by their goals of understanding science and innovation. These practitioners of the science of science use the scientific methods to study themselves, examine projects that work as well as those that fail, quantify the patterns that characterize discovery and invention, and offer lessons to improve science as a whole. In this talk, I’ll highlight some examples of research in this area, hoping to illustrate the promise of science of science as well as its limitations. 

Bio: Dashun Wang is the Kellogg Chair of Technology and Professor of Management and Organizations at the Kellogg School of Management and the McCormick School of Engineering, Northwestern University, where he is the Founding Director of the Center for Science of Science and Innovation (CSSI) and the Founding Co-Director of the Ryan Institute on Complexity. He is best known for his contributions on the Science of Science, a quest to turn the scientific methods and curiosities upon science itself. His research has been published in journals like Nature and Science, and has been featured in virtually all major global media outlets. Dashun is a recipient of multiple awards for his research and teaching, including the AFOSR Young Investigator award, Poets & Quants Best 40 Under 40 Professors, Thinkers50 Radar 2021, Top scientific awards from the Complex Systems Society, German Physical Society, and Network Science Society, including the Erdos-Renyi Prize, and more. Check out his first book: The Science of Science.

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This talk is presented by the Department of Informatics and Networked Systems.