I am the Associate Dean for Research for the College of Arts, Media and Design, Professor of Communication Studies, and Director of the Network Science PhD program at Northeastern University. I am fascinated by how communication technology shapes, changes, and transforms our relationships with power. From small groups to whole societies, I use computational and mixed-methods to understand how everyday people can use communication technology to create a more just, equitable, and inclusive world. I love to collaborate in interdisciplinary teams and I have co-authored with colleagues from many different disciplines, including computer science, psychology, sociology, political science, digital humanities, design, and public health. I earned my  Ph.D. in Media, Technology and Society from Northwestern University, and M.S. and B.S. degrees in Communication from Cornell University.

In addition to research, I love advising and mentoring. I won my college and university’s Excellence in Teaching awards in 2017, I co-founded Women in Network Science (WiNS), and I am fortunate to work with a team of brilliant junior researchers in the CoMM Lab

Eugenia Perekhodko is a postdoctoral researcher in the CoMM lab. She recently received her PhD from the University of Rome focusing on Network Science with a thesis based on "Structural Network Analysis." Her primary research interests are in Complex networks, Network structure, Web mining, Social network analysis and Network modeling. Eugenia's first PhD project was dedicated to the analysis of the structure regarding the core of Web and Social networks, graph theory theoretical notions, and algorithms. She earned her BS and MS in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science from Moscow State University in 2014.

I am a Ph.D. Student at the Network Science Institute entering my second year. I received my Bachelor’s degree in Physics and Philosophy from Northeastern University in December 2020, where I took my first Network Science course in 2018. During this time, I focused my attention broadly on dynamical processes on complex social networks and social constructivism. Before my Ph.D I spent a time as a consultant in the insurance industry and spent a year at the Center for Social Media Responsibility at the University of Michigan’s School of Information as a full-time researcher studying computational sociolinguistics, moderation systems, and misinformation.

My work now is broadly on developing novel methods to measure, detect, and analytically represent communication processes in the world. Simple diffusion models that have been utilized for years neglect crucial information about the messages we send, the channels we send them through, and the rich knowledge gained from an analysis of the power structures underlying every communication process. Research in this area is ongoing and is very interdisciplinary, but updates can be found on my Google Scholar and website.

Outside of research, I’m a DJ and co-founder of FDEC Records as well as an avid-but-only-just-starting road cyclist. I’m so grateful to have an advisor that creates such an open, diverse, and fun space to research. Brooke has been my #1 advocate and mentor for the last 5 years and I couldn’t be any happier :)

I am a fourth-year student in the Network Science Ph.D. program at Northeastern. I earned my undergraduate degree in computer science and critical social theory at Wesleyan University. With full appreciation for the harms wrought by the internet, my research focuses on the ways in which it gives voice, visibility, and access to marginalized groups, and in turn, helps shift dominant cultural attitudes and narratives. I mix network science tools with qualitative methods to explore how youth in particular leverage social media for political participation and social change. I’ve led a project about the way keyword-based data collection obscures young users’ participation in online political discourse, which received a top student paper award in the Political Communication Division at the 72nd Annual International Communication Association conference. I’ve also led work on how young people remix activist content on TikTok, and am currently analyzing how youth activists exploit online affordances to reconfigure power in movement building. Some things that I love outside of research include word games, puzzles, Set, and glitter.

I am a fourth year PhD student working with Dr. Brooke Foucault Welles. My interests are online hate speech and leadership in teams.

I am currently leading a project on how community based interventions can be used to mitigate the harm of hate speech. I am utilizing a mixed methods approach using both qualitative interviewing and quantitative data analysis of online hate speech.

I am also working on a collaboration with igraph and Women in Network Science to study how leadership structures impact longevity and diversity.

Before coming to Northeastern I received a Bachelors in Psychology and a minor in Art from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Most recently, I received an NULab Seedling grant and became a CITAP affiliate. In my spare time I enjoy sewing, rock climbing and playing board games.

Alyssa is a third year PhD student working with Brooke Foucault Welles and David Lazer. Before coming to Northeastern, she worked as a data engineer & data scientist; before that, she studied Comparative Media Studies and Computer Science at MIT. She is interested in community-building in online spaces, the spread of attention online, and natural language processing. As of 2023, Alyssa is a National Science Foundation GRFP award recipient. 

Alyssa is currently studying attention brokers, third parties that contribute to the creation of a new following relationship through their amplification, as well as Twitter attention niches. She is also conducting a retrospective autoethnography of university bureaucracies and social media as a result of fallout from this research. In addition, she is studying Twitter data related to the#FreeBritney movement, and was published in 2021 for her paper "OpenFraming: Open-sourced Tool for Computational Framing Analysis of Multilingual Data." In her work with the Lazer Lab, Alyssa is building an open-source aggregate data tool to make some of the Twitter data the lab has more widely available. 

Her favorite part of working with this team is their emphasis on work/life balance and overall commitment to take care of one another's well-being. In her free time, she powerlifts, bakes, embroiders, and hangs out with her dog, Eliza. During long seminars, you might catch her knitting!

I am an incoming first-year Ph.D. student working with Dr. Brooke Foucault Welles. My general research interests lie in computational social science, computer-mediated communication, and online communities. More specifically, I am interested in how social identities undergird communication and interactions on social media: how individuals construct and express their identities and how people perceive and react to others' identity expression online. On a larger scale, I am also interested in how identity-based complex social processes, especially identities related to political ideology, nationality, and race/ethnicity, influence the phenomenon of balkanization, polarization, mobilization, and user migration in online spaces.

I earned my master's degree in Information Science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Before joining the lab, I was a data scientist at the Center for Anti Racist Research at Boston University where I was the primary contributor to the Racial Data Tracker project. In my free time, I am an avid home cook/baker, concert-goer, and funny cat video binge-watcher.

I am a second year PhD student in Interdisciplinary Design and Media working with Dr. Brooke Foucault Welles and Dr. Nabeel Gillani. I am interested in combining data visualization, systems design, and communication technologies to explore tools supporting more transparent, intelligent, efficient, and equitable outcomes in policy. I have previously worked as a data scientist, cognitive science researcher, technology startup founder, analytics product manager, local government activist and political candidate, and data visualization designer in the civic technology space.

I received a bachelor's in computer science and cognitive science from Wellesley College and an MS in information design and data visualization from Northeastern University. I also have a graduate certificate in data, economics, and development policy from MITx.

Through theory and practice, I am excited to explore enriching our toolset for collective decision making, re-examining the balance of influence in policy, and impacting how information flows through systems and communities.

I am a second-year Ph.D. student in Northeastern's Khoury College of Computer Science. Broadly, my interests focus on the ways in which marginalized people form diffuse or federated communities on social media, and how those communities respond to internal and external conflicts which threaten their integrity. I'm currently analyzing data related to Enbridge's Line 3 and the #StopLine3 movement to understand how activist groups' uses of media differ between platforms and cases.

Prior to arriving at Northeastern, I received a B.S. in computer science and mathematics at the University of Maryland, College Park. During my undergrad, I participated in an REU at Rutgers University where I devised new techniques for dual-sensor porosity detection in 3D laser metal deposition printing. I also worked at the American Mathematical Society's Washington, D.C. office, where I helped connect career mathematicians with U.S. Congresspeople to facilitate government-supported basic research. I then received an M.S. in theoretical computer science at the University of Maryland, College Park, during which I studied approximation techniques for the set cover problem and how they were improved using probabilistically-checkable proof techniques.