Sonic Research Group

The Science of Networks in Communities (SONIC) research group advances social network theories, methods, and tools to better understand and meet the needs of diverse communities. SONIC develops cutting-edge techniques to study and improve social and knowledge networks in distributed working groups, online communities, virtual teams, and other large communities. Using a comprehensive methodology, SONIC researchers model, assess, validate, and enable the emergence of social and knowledge networks. SONIC helps communities discover their existing communication and knowledge networks, diagnose their network’s health by measuring its robustness, connectedness, bottlenecks, etc, and design the social incentives and technical infrastructure needed for networks to function at optimal effectiveness.