Noshir Contractor

05/06/2025 itdf

Summary

Noshir Contractor is the Jane S. & William J. White Professor of Behavioral Sciences in the McCormick School of Engineering & Applied Science, the School of Communication and the Kellogg School of Management and Director of the Science of Networks in Communities (SONIC) Research Group at Northwestern University. He is also the former President of the International Communication Association (ICA).

Additionally, he is the host of a podcast series titled “Untangling the Web,” where he engages in conversations with thought leaders to explore how the Web is shaping society, and how society in turns is shaping the Web.

Source: Kellogg School of Management webpage

OnAir Post: Noshir Contractor

About

Biography

Professor Contractor has been at the forefront of three emerging interdisciplines: network science, computational social science and web science. He is investigating how social and knowledge networks form – and perform – in contexts including business, scientific communities, healthcare and space travel.  His research has been funded continuously for 25 years by the U.S. National Science Foundation with additional funding from the U.S. National Institutes of Health, NASA, DARPA, Army Research Laboratory and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

His book Theories of Communication Networks (co-authored with Peter Monge) received the 2003 Book of the Year award from the Organizational Communication Division of the National Communication Association and the 2021 Fellows Book Award from the International Communication Association (ICA).  He is a Fellow of the Academy of Management, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the Network Science Society, and the International Communication Association (ICA).  He also received the Distinguished Scholar Award from the National Communication Association, the Lifetime Service Award from the Communication, Digital Technology, & Organization Division of the Academy of Management, and the Simmel Award from the International Network for Social Network Analysis (INSNA). In 2018 he received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras where he received a Bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering. He received his Ph.D. from the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Southern California.

Source: Kellogg School of Management webpage

Web Links

ITDF Essay, April 2025

AI Will Fundamentally Reshape How and What We Think, Relate to and Understand Ourselves; It Will Also Raise Important Questions About Human Agency and Authenticity

Source: ITDF Webpage

“As someone deeply immersed in studying how digital technologies shape human networks and behavior, I envision AI’s impact on human experience by 2035 as transformative but not deterministic. The partnership between humans and AI will likely enhance our cognitive capabilities while raising important questions about agency and authenticity. We’ll see AI becoming an integral collaborator in knowledge work, creativity and decision-making. However, this integration won’t simply augment human intelligence – it will fundamentally reshape how and what we think, relate and understand ourselves.

“The boundaries between human and machine cognition will blur, leading to new forms of distributed intelligence in which human insight and AI capabilities become increasingly intertwined.This deep integration will affect core human traits like empathy, creativity and social bonding. While AI may enhance our ability to connect across distances and understand complex systems, we’ll need to actively preserve and cultivate uniquely human qualities like moral reasoning and emotional intelligence.

The boundaries between human and machine cognition will blur, leading to new forms of distributed intelligence in which human insight and AI capabilities become increasingly intertwined. This deep integration will affect core human traits like empathy, creativity and social bonding. … We’ll need to actively preserve and cultivate uniquely human qualities like moral reasoning and emotional intelligence.

“The key challenge will be maintaining human agency while leveraging AI’s capabilities. We’ll need to develop new frameworks for human-AI collaboration that preserve human values while embracing technological advancement. This isn’t about resistance to change, but rather thoughtful integration that enhances rather than diminishes human potential.

“My research suggests the outcome won’t be uniformly positive or negative but will depend on how we collectively shape these technologies and their integration into social systems. The focus should be on developing AI that amplifies human capabilities while preserving core human values and social bonds.”

This essay was written in January 2025 in reply to the question: Over the next decade, what is likely to be the impact of AI advances on the experience of being human? How might the expanding interactions between humans and AI affect what many people view today as ‘core human traits and behaviors’? This and nearly 200 additional essay responses are included in the 2025 report “Being Human in 2035.”

More Information

Wikipedia


Noshir S. Contractor is an Indian-American network scientist who is the Jane S. & William J. White Professor of Behavioral Sciences in the McCormick School of Engineering & Applied Science, the School of Communication and the Kellogg School of Management and the director of the Science of Networks in Communities (SONIC) Research Group[1] at Northwestern University. He is also the former President of the International Communication Association (ICA) and the current Executive Director of the Web Science Trust.[2]

Education

Contractor completed his Doctor of Philosophy degree in communication at the University of Southern California in 1987. Prior to this he received a Master of Arts in Communication also from USC in 1986 and a Bachelor of Technology in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras[3] (Chennai) in 1983.

Career

Research

He has published more than 250 research papers[4][5][6] in the area of social communication networks.[7] He is known for the Multi-Theoretical Multi-Level (MTML) Framework with Peter Monge described in detail in Theories of Communication Networks.[8] He was the host of the podcast “Untangling the Web”. Professor Contractor has been at the forefront of three emerging interdisciplines: network science, computational social science and web science. He is investigating how social and knowledge networks form – and perform – in contexts including business, scientific communities, healthcare and space travel. His research has been funded continuously for 25 years by the U.S. National Science Foundation with additional funding from the U.S. National Institutes of Health, NASA, DARPA, Army Research Laboratory and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Recognition

In 2014, Professor Contractor was awarded the prestigious National Communication Association (NCA) Distinguished Scholar Award, honoring “a lifetime of scholarly achievement in the study of human communication.”[9]
In 2015, Professor Contractor was honored with the title of International Communication Association (ICA) Fellow, in recognition of “distinguished scholarly contributions to the broad field of communication.”[10]
In 2018, he was awarded a Distinguished Alumnus Award of the Indian Institute of Technology Madras.[11]
In 2019, he was elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) [12] and an ACM Fellow “for contributions to advances in computational social science, network science and web science”.[13] In 2022, he was named Fellow of the Network Science Society. In 2023, he was elected as a Fellow of the Academy of Management.[14]

References

  1. ^ “The Science of Networks in Communities (SONIC) – Advancing The Science of Networks in Communities”. sonic.northwestern.edu. Retrieved January 2, 2024.
  2. ^ “Professor Noshir Contractor joins Web Science Trust | Electronics and Computer Science | University of Southampton | University of Southampton”. www.ecs.soton.ac.uk. Retrieved January 2, 2024.
  3. ^ “Noshir Contractor – Director”. sonic.northwestern.edu. Retrieved April 12, 2018.
  4. ^ Noshir Contractor publications indexed by Microsoft Academic
  5. ^ Noshir Contractor publications indexed by Google Scholar Edit this at Wikidata
  6. ^ Noshir Contractor at DBLP Bibliography Server Edit this at Wikidata
  7. ^ Lazer, D.; Pentland, A.; Adamic, L.; Aral, S.; Barabasi, A. -L.; Brewer, D.; Christakis, N.; Contractor, N.; Fowler, J.; Gutmann, M.; Jebara, T.; King, G.; Macy, M.; Roy, D.; Van Alstyne, M. (2009). “SOCIAL SCIENCE: Computational Social Science”. Science. 323 (5915): 721–723. doi:10.1126/science.1167742. PMC 2745217. PMID 19197046.
  8. ^ Contractor, Noshir S.; Monge, Peter R. (2003). Theories of communication networks. Oxford [Oxfordshire]: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-516037-1.
  9. ^ “NCA National Awards”. National Communication Association. Retrieved January 2, 2024.
  10. ^ “Fellows – International Communication Association”.
  11. ^ “IIT-Madras announces Distinguished Alumni Awards 2018 | Chennai News – Times of India”. The Times of India. December 29, 2017.
  12. ^ “AAAS Announces Leading Scientists Elected as 2019 Fellows | American Association for the Advancement of Science”.
  13. ^ 2019 ACM Fellows Recognized for Far-Reaching Accomplishments that Define the Digital Age, Association for Computing Machinery, retrieved December 11, 2019
  14. ^ “Ten Inducted Into AOM Fellows for 2023”. aom.org. Retrieved September 24, 2023.


source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noshir_Contractor

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