Social Networks: Looking Ahead

Chair: Ravi Kumar, Yahoo! Research

Panelists: Christos Faloutsos (Carnegie Mellon University); David Jensen (University of Massachusetts, Amherst); Jure Leskovec (Carnegie Mellon University); Gueorgi Kossinets (Cornell University); Andrew Tomkins (Yahoo! Research)

By now, online social networks have become an indispensable part of both online and offline lives of human beings. A large fraction of time spent online by a user is directly influence by the social networks to which he/she belongs. This calls for a deeper examination of social networks as large-scale dynamic objects that foster efficient person-person interaction.

The goal of our panel is to discuss social networks from various research angles. In particular, we plan to focus on the following broad research-related topics: large scale data mining, algorithmic questions, sociological aspects, privacy, web search, etc. We will also discuss the business and societal impacts of social networks. Each of these topics has generated a lot of research in recent years and while taking stock of what has been done, we will also be discussing the directions in which these topics are headed, from both science and society points of view. Our panel will consist of eminent researchers, who have worked/been working on an eclectic and diverse mix of problems in social networks.

Important Dates

  • Proposals due: March 15, 2008
  • Notification of Acceptance: April 18, 2008

Call for Panel Proposals

The KDD-2008 organizing committee invites proposals for panels to be held at the conference. Panel proposals should address emerging, controversial and critical issues in data mining that would likely to have a lasting impact on the field and would also lead to exciting discussions and debates. A mix of industry, academic and government participants is encouraged.

Proposal Details

Panel proposals should be no more than four pages long and should include the following:

  • Title of the panel
  • The topic and issues to be discussed in the panel
  • Name, affiliation, and contact information for the panel chair
  • Names and affiliations of up to four panelists (in addition to the panel chair) who have made a commitment to participate
  • Brief biography of each participant

Panel proposals should be sent by e-mail in PDF or ASCII format to the Panel Chair Alex Tuzhilin (atuzhili at stern nyu edu)