ICWSM-12

Keynote Speakers

Sponsored by Science Foundation Ireland

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  Andrew Tomkins

  Engineering Director, Google+

  Talk Title: Social Networking and Google+: A Historical Perspective

  This talk explores the early origins of (offline) human social networking for clues into what the future of online social networking will hold. Andrew will distinguish between tools for lightweight maintenance of social connections versus tools for completion of tasks. He will give a concrete example of this distinction in the context of Google+, and finally, will walk through some classical and some new problems in the field.

  Andrew Tomkins is an engineering director at Google working on measurement, modelling, and analysis of content, communities, and users on the World Wide Web. Prior to joining Google, he spent four years at Yahoo! as chief scientist of search, and eight years at IBM's Almaden Research Center, where he co-founded the WebFountain project. Andrew holds Bachelors degrees in Math and CS from MIT, and a PhD in CS from Carnegie Mellon University; he has published over a hundred technical papers.

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  Lada Adamic

  Associate Professor, University of Michigan

  Talk Title: The Information Life of Social

  Lada A. Adamic is an associate professor in the School of Information and the Center for the Study of Complex Systems at the University of Michigan. She is also affiliated with EECS. Her research interests center on information dynamics in networks: how information diffuses, how it can be found, and how it influences the evolution of a network's structure. Her projects have included identifying expertise in online question and answer forums, studying the dynamics of viral marketing, and characterizing the structure in blogs and other online communities. She has received an NSF CAREER award, and best paper awards from Hypertext '08, ICWSM-10 and ICWSM-11, and the most influential paper of the decade award from Web Intelligence '11.

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  Robin Dunbar

  Head of the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology, University of Oxford

  Talk Title: Why Facebook Won't Get You Any More Friends

  Robin Dunbar graduated with a BSc in Psychology and Philosophy from the University of Oxford and a PhD in Psychology from the University of Bristol. He has held research fellowships at Cambridge and Liverpool Universities, and teaching posts at the University of Stockholm, University College London, and the University of Liverpool. He is currently Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology and Director of the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology in the School of Anthropology, and a Fellow of Magdalen College. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1998. He is co-Director of the British Academy's Centenary Research Project 'Lucy to Language: The Archaeology of the Social Brain', a multi-disciplinary project involving, in addition to the University of Oxford, research groups at Liverpool University, Royal Holloway (University of London), Southampton University, and the University of Kent. His principal research interest is the evolution of sociality, with specific focus on humans, nonhuman primates and ungulates.

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  Igor Perisic

  Senior Director of Engineering, LinkedIn

  Talk Title: A Look at Some Dynamics of Social Networking Following the Jobs Ecosystem

  Igor Perisic is an Engineering Senior Director at LinkedIn, where he is responsible for the company's Data and Analytics infrastructure and products. At LinkedIn, he built the SNA team and is currently working on Search, the Social Graph, Data Infrastructure, A/B platforms, measurement, modeling, and relevance. In the past, he has worked as a Senior Product Manager at Microsoft, Chief Scientist of Entopia's research program, Statistical Consultant at Turn, and CTO at Healthline.com. He holds a bachelor degree in mathematics from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) and a doctorate in statistics from Harvard University. He has published several scientific articles related to the educational, biostatistical, data-mining and information retrieval fields. His current interests are in the areas of statistics, data mining, social networks, search, semantic engines, unstructured data analysis, information retrieval, distributed systems and data infrastructure.

Invited Speakers

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  Fabrizio Sestini

  Scientific Officer, FIRE, European Commission

  Talk Title: Collective Awareness Platforms for Sustainability and Social Innovation

  Fabrizio Sestini is a scientific officer and programme manager working with the European Commission. He has launched and managed several research initiatives related to different aspects of Future Internet policies and developments (including SAC and FIRE). Currently, his main interest is the definition of a multidisciplinary "Internet Science", allowing us to better understand the interrelation between technological developments and socio-economic-environmental impacts of the Internet. The goal is to identify Internet technologies and systems which, beyond commercial hype, can lead to a more open, inclusive and collaborative society.