About

I am a computational social scientist with research interests in unvailing the structure and evolution of social networks using statistical and computational models. My research focuses on how people form and maintain social ties and how the broader social, technical, economic, and natural environments affect and mediate this process. I conduct social network research at a number of thematic intersections, including online political polarization, long-term persistence of social ties, higher-order group interactions, social contagion, and scientific knowledge production.

I leverage large-scale digital trace data of social interactions in my research with a keen interest in the “novel” uses of “old” data for not only addressing fundamental classical sociological questions (e.g., what is a social group?), but also for making novel empirical discoveries (e.g., existence of online network wormholes), tackling new societal problems (e.g., exacerbation of online polarization), and understanding new scientific puzzles that emerge as science advances (e.g., why small research teams produce disruptive knowledge). My works were published in Science, Social Networks, PLoS One, CIKM, Complex Networks and Their Applications, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, and Big Data and Society.

Currently, I am a tenure-track assistant professor in the Software and Societal Systems Department (S3D) in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. Before joining CMU, I was postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan and Northwestern University. I received my Ph.D. in sociology at Cornell University and my M.A. and B.A. in sociology at Yonsei University, South Korea.