By Dave Lucas
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wamc/local-wamc-900099.mp3
Troy, NY – The Social Cognitive Networks Academic Research Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute was unveiled Tuesday at an official ceremony in Troy: Capital District Bureau Chief Dave Lucas reports.
It's a $16.75 million research center that will study "social cognitive networks" - both traditional networks and those enabled by technology like Twitter, Facebook, and email - searching for patterns and improvements to promote information exchange and decision making. Global social networks can help us solve problems - produce better cars, choose our elected officials, sustain financial systems - if we understand how best to use them. At present, however, we have no way to chart technologically enabled social networks, and no models that optimize their new global reach. That's where RPI steps into the picture.
The Army Research Laboratory has funded the new center to develop methods of charting social networks, discovering how they are formed and exploring the hierarchies exist within them, while examining the diversity of contacts made, and how criminal activities within them can be curtailed. The center will be headed by Professor Bolek Szymanski, who envisions many positive outcomes from a technology whose surface has barely been scratched.
The Army Research Lab will fund the center's second, five year phase of operation with an $18 million grant. The center's first five year phase will be funded by the $16.75 million grant mentioned earlier. Engineers agree that global social networks will help us do things like produce better cars, choose our elected officials, and sustain financial systems if we understand how best to use them. RPI is working with a large group of partner institutions and businesses to move forward with its research center. Among them are Northeastern University, IBM Corporation, Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.