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 a Trustee of the Web Science Trust.[2]

Noshir Contractor
Contractor in 2007
Born
Noshir S. Contractor

(1959-10-16) October 16, 1959 (age 64)
CitizenshipUSA
Alma materIndian Institute of Technology Madras
University of Southern California
Scientific career
FieldsOrganizational communication, Network science, Computational social science
InstitutionsNorthwestern University
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Indian Institute of Technology
University of Southern California
ThesisA dynamic reformulation of perceptions of inequity: Their organizational antecedents and outcomes (1988)
Websitenosh.northwestern.edu

Education edit

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 edit

Research edit

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 edit

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 edit

  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  
  6. ^ Noshir Contractor at DBLP Bibliography Server  
  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.