CS 598 Methods and Applications in Network Analysis

This CS 598 course is centered around the concepts of community detection and search, analysis of large networks, development of realistic network simulators, network growth models, and evaluation techniques. Emphasis is placed on real-world problems in the general area of scientometrics.

There are three components to the course. a) Assignments b) Lectures c) Projects. Grades are assigned based on satisfactory completion of assignments, required class presentations, participation in class discussions, and assessed quality of course projects.. A successfully completed course project should be "near-ready" for submission to a conference or journal. Students are strongly encouraged to publish results from these projects and the instructors will work with students to support manuscript submission.

Minimum Required Skills:  The ability to retrieve data from relational databases and APIs and analyze these data in tabular and graph formats. Intermediate programming ability in a scripting language such as Python, statistical analysis, cluster computing and Linux environments are necessary. The instructional campus cluster will be available to the students for the duration of the course. Minimal required skills will be evaluated through the first assignment after which, advice on whether to remain registered will be provided to each student.

Participating students will explore scientific questions, analyze data, develop new methods or apply existing ones. The course is taught by George Chacko and Tandy Warnow. It is designed for graduate students in computer science. Students from other disciplines are welcome but must have approval from an instructor. 

CS 598 Computational Scientometrics was first taught in the fall of 2022. While the objectives of this course remain roughly equivalent, several changes that reflect prior experience from the fall of 2022 are being applied in the interest of a stronger learning experience. Lectures and critical discussion of research literature will be more tightly coupled to designing and executing a required research project. 

Students are encouraged to work in pairs on their research projects, which must be presented to and approved by the instructors before work can commence. Building upon existing projects is permitted with the understanding that no credit will be given for work that was completed before the course began.

Lectures and classes will be online. Office hours will be both virtual and in-person. This course has a required in-person activity– at least one in-person presentation of a course project proposal. You will need to schedule this event with the instructors; it will not take place during the class lecture but may occur during in-person office hours. 

• Class Presentation: 20%

• Homework Assignments: 10%

• Class participation: 5%

• Course Project: 65%

Office Hours Chacko: Mondays: 4-5 pm If no one has shown up by 4:15 pm, the session will end.

Office Hours Warnow: Tuesday: 4-5 pm If no one has shown up by 4:15 pm, the session will end.

Invited Lectures: 

• David Bader, Distinguished Professor and Director of the Institute for Data Science, NJIT, USA (Jan 28, 2025)

• Jodi Schneider, PhD. Associate Professor, I-School, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (Feb 6, 2025)

• Jens Peter Andersen, PhD. Senior Researcher, Dept. of Political Science, Aarhus University, Denmark (Feb 13, 2025)

• Meher Pindiprolu, PhD, ETH Zurich, Switzerland (Feb 25, 2025)

• Jacob Habinek, PhD. Associate Professor, Institute for Analytical Sociology, Linkoping University, Sweden (March 4, 2025)

• 2025-01-21 Introductory Lecture-I Chacko Course overview

• 2025-01-23 Introductory Lecture-II Warnow Introduction to Community Detection

• 2025-01-28 David Bader: NJIT, USA Massive-scale Graph Analytics 

• 2025-01-30 Chacko: Quantitatively Elucidating Citation Theory 

  • Gilbert, N. (1997) ‘A Simulation of the Structure of Academic Science’ Sociological Research Online, vol. 2, no. 2

• 2025-02-04  Warnow: Edge Connectivity and Stochastic Block Models

  • https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.02813

  • https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.10464

• 2025-02-06 Jodi Schneider UIUC: Analyzing the Consistency of Retraction Indexing and Why it Matters?

  • https://infoqualitylab.org/projects/risrs2020/

• 2025-02-11 Chacko: K-core clustering and community search

  • https://direct.mit.edu/qss/article/3/1/289/109629/Center-periphery-structure-in-research-communities

• 2025-02-13 Jens Peter Andersen: Aarhus University Redundancy and constraint in social networks

  • https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ipm.2011.09.001

  • Structural Holes versus Network Closure as Social Capital 

• 2025-02-18 Review of Projects - I

  • Each group or individual presents a summary of intent 5 minutes and answers questions for 5-10 min

• 2025-02-20 Minhyuk Park & review of assignment 1

  • Using the campus cluster for network analysis

• 2025-02-25 Meher Chaitanya Pindiprolu ETH Zurich, Influence Processes on Social Networks

  • https://ojs.aaai.org/index.php/ICWSM/article/view/31345/33505

• 2025-02-27 Warnow FastEnsemble: a new clustering consensus method

  •  https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.02077

• 2025-03-04 Jacob Habinek Linkoping University Evaluating science and scientists

  • How the Nobel became a world prize: Scalar mediation in the global literary field

• 2025-03-06 Chacko TBA

• 2025-03-11 Review of Projects- II

• 2025-03-13 Assigned Paper Presentation

  • Andrew Nam Silva et al. (2020) 10.1162/qss_a_00070

  • Ruining Zhao Meghanathan, N,. (2024) 10.1007/s41109‐024‐00667‐7

• 2025-03-18 [Spring Break]

• 2025-03-20 [Spring Break]

• 2025-03-25

  • Yuanxi Fu Touwen et al. (2024) 10.1038/s41598-024-61940-4

  • Vikram Ramavarapu Eom and Fortunato (2011) 10.1371/journal.pone.0024926

• 2025-03-27

  • Ted Ledford Aksnes, D. 2019, 10.1177/2158244019829575

  • Summary Discussion (students) of presentations by Andrew, Ruining, Yuanxi, Vikram, and Ted.

• 2025-04-01: Day off before detailed presentations begin

• 2025-04-03: Ruining and Vikram

• 2025-04-08: [open discussion]

• 2025-04-10 Yuanxi

• 2025-04-15 Andrew

• 2025-04-17 Ted

• 2025-04-22 Ruining and Vikram

• 2025-04-24 Yuanxi

• 2025-04-29 Andrew

• 2025-05-01 Ted 

• 2025-05-06 Final Reports Due

• 2025-05-08 In-person discussions 2130 Siebel