Sinan Aral is a leading expert on Social Networks, Social Media and Digital Strategy. He has worked closely with Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft, the New York Times, Nike, IBM, Cisco, Intel, Oracle, SAP and many other leading Fortune 500 firms on realizing business value from social media and information technology investments. He is an Assistant Professor and Microsoft Faculty Fellow at the NYU Stern School of Business and Affiliated Faculty at MIT. His research focuses on social contagion, product virality and measuring and managing how information diffusion in massive social networks such as Twitter and Facebook affects information worker productivity, consumer demand and viral marketing. This research has won numerous awards including the Microsoft Faculty Fellowship (2010), the PopTech Science and Public Leaders Fellowship (2010), an NSF Early Career Development (CAREER) Award (2009), the Best Overall Paper Award at the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS) (in both 2006 and 2008), the ICIS Best Paper in IT Economics Award (2006), the ICIS Best Paper in IT Business Value Research Award (2006), the ACM SIGMIS Best Dissertation Award (2007), and the IBM Faculty Award (2009). Sinan has been a Fulbright Scholar, served as Chief Scientist and on the board of directors of SocialAmp, a social commerce company that enables targeting and peer referral in social media networks (which was sold to Merkle in January, 2012), and is currently an organizer of the Workshop on Information in Networks (WIN): http://www.winworkshop.net. He is a frequent speaker at such thought leading events as TEDxSiliconValley, TEDxColumbia Engineering, TEDxNYU, Wired’s “Nextwork” and PopTech and has been the keynote speaker at executive gatherings such as Omnicom’s Global “Emerge” Summit. His work is often featured in popular press outlets such as the Economist, the New York Times, Businessweek, Wired, Fast Company and CIO Magazine. Sinan is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Northwestern University, holds masters degrees from the London School of Economics and Harvard University, and received his PhD from MIT. You can find him on Twitter @sinanaral. Here is a Wordle of his NSF CAREER Award Proposal: The Workshop on Information in Networks (WIN) website: www.winworkshop.net Published and Forthcoming Papers Engineering Social Contagions: Optimal Network Seeding in the Presence of Homophily. Network Science. (with L Muchnik and A Sundararajan) IT, Repeated Contracts & the Number of Suppliers. Management Science. (with Y Bakos and E Brynjolfsson, Conditionally Accepted) Information in Digital, Economic and Social Networks. Information Systems Research. (with A Sundararajan, F Provost and G Oestreicher-Singer) Poked to Vote. Nature. Identifying Influential and Suscpetible Members of Social Networks. Science. (with D Walker) Information, Technology & Information Worker Productivity. Information Systems Research. (with E Brynjolfsson and M Van Alstyne) Three Way Complimentarities: Performance Pay, HR Analytics and Information Technology. Management Science. (with E Brynjolfsson and L Wu) The Diversity-Bandwidth Tradeoff. American Journal of Sociology. (with M Van Alstyne) Creating Social Contagion through Viral Product Design: A Randomized Trial of Peer Influence in Networks. Management Science (with D Walker) Identifying Social Influence in Networks Using Randomized Experiments. IEEE Intelligent Systems. (with D Walker) Forget Viral Marketing: Make the Product Itself Viral. Harvard Business Review (with D Walker) Identifying Social Influence: A Comment on Opinion Leadership and Social Contagion in New Product Diffusion. Marketing Science. Distinguishing Influence Based Contagion from Homophily Driven Diffusion in Dynamic Networks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (with L Muchnik and A Sundararajan) Computational Social Science. Science. (with 14 co-authors) IT Assets, Organizational Capabilities & Firm Performance: How Resource Allocations and Organizational Differences Explain Performance Variation. Organization Science. (with P Weill) Generating Premium Returns on Your IT Investments. Sloan Management Review. (with P Weill) Anticipating Outbreaks: A Prevention Role for Integrated Information Systems. Sexually Transmitted Diseases. (with S Berman and S Aral) Working Papers and Papers Under Review Anatomy and Dynamics of Vision Advantages. (with V David) Tie Strength, Embeddedness & Social Influence: Evidence from a Large Scale Networked Experiment. (with D Walker) Water Cooler Networks: Performance Implications of Informal Interaction Structures in Information Intensive Work. (with B Waber, L Wu, E Brynjolfsson and S Pentland)  Sociometric Badges: A New Tool for IS Research. (with B Waber, D Olguin Olguin, L Wu E Brynjolfsson and S Pentland) Content and Context: Identifying the Impact of Qualitative Information on Consumer Choice. (with P Ipeirotis and S Taylor) Antecedents and Consequences of Mutual Knowledge in Teams. (with E Brynjolfsson and M Van Alstyne) Productivity Effects of Information Diffusion in Networks. (with E Brynjolfsson and M Van Alstyne) Which Came First, IT or Productivity? The Virtuous Cycle of Investment and Use in Enterprise Systems. (with E Brynjolfsson and DJ Wu) Regional Economic Context and the Value of Firm-Level IT Investment. (with L Wu and V Morabito) Aral, Escobari, Nishina (2001) "Assessing Network Applications for Economic and Social Development: Sustainable Access in Rural India" (Position Paper of the Sustainable Access in Rural India (SARI) Project). Bio Sinan Aral is an Assistant Professor and Microsoft Faculty Fellow at the NYU Stern School of Business. His research focuses on social contagion and measuring and managing how information diffusion in massive social networks such as Twitter and Facebook affects information worker productivity, consumer demand and viral marketing. This research has won numerous awards including the Microsoft Faculty Fellowship (2010), the PopTech Science and Public Leaders Fellowship (2010), an NSF Early Career Development (CAREER) Award (2009), the Best Overall Paper Award at the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS) (in both 2006 and 2008), the ICIS Best Paper in IT Economics Award (2006), the ICIS Best Paper in IT Business Value Research Award (2006), the ACM SIGMIS Best Dissertation Award (2007), and the IBM Faculty Award (2009). Sinan was the keynote speaker at the International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM) in 2011, the keynote speaker at the KDD Workshop on Social Media Analytics (KDD-SOMA) in 2010 and an invited speaker at TEDxSiliconValley in 2011. In all three sessions, his address covered the state of research on ‘Content and Causality in Social Media Networks.’ Professor Aral’s work measuring the impact of information diffusion in email networks on information worker productivity, published in the American Journal of Sociology, incorporates privacy preserving measurement functions on hashed textual email content and has been called a "breakthrough in testing information flow assumptions [and]... a prototype for authoritative network analyses of information flow in large heterogeneous populations.” (Burt 2008: 958). His work on Randomized Trials of Peer Influence in Networks, published in Management Science, was one of the first randomized trials of peer influence in social media networks of millions of users and was selected as an “Editor’s Choice” article by the editors of Science. Sinan has been a Fulbright Scholar, serves on the board of SocialAmp, a social commerce startup that enables targeting and peer referral in social media networks, and is currently an organizer of the Workshop on Information in Networks (WIN): http://www.winworkshop.net. His work has been conducted in collaboration with Yahoo, Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, Intel, Oracle, SAP and many other leading technology firms and has been published in leading journals such as the American Journal of Sociology, IEEE Intelligent Systems, Information Systems Research, Management Science, Marketing Science, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Science, Organization Science, the Harvard Business Review and the Sloan Management Review. This work has also been mentioned in popular press outlets such as the Economist, the New York Times, Businessweek, Wired and CIO Magazine. Sinan is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Northwestern University and holds masters degrees from the London School of Economics and Harvard University. He received his PhD from MIT. Work in Progress (An incomplete list of ongoing work. Papers are not quite ready.) "Information Theory & Anonymity: A Tool for Protecting Privacy While Preserving Content" "The Co-Evolution of Networks, Information and Uncertainty" "The Information Seeking Habits of Effective Geographically Distributed Teams" "Do Firms Profit from Geographically Distributed Work?" Current Projects Information Worker Productivity Collaborators: Erik Brynjolfsson, Marshall Van Alstyne A study of the production process of information workers aimed at measuring information worker productivity and the impact of IT and information flows on information work and information worker productivity. Supported by the National Science Foundation (grants ISS-9876233 and ISS-0085725), Intel, Cisco, France Telecom, the Marvin Bower Fellowship and the MIT Center for Digital Business. IT Assets and Business Value Collaborators: Erik Brynjolfsson, Peter Weill An international study of the impact of IT investments, IT assets and organizational practices on firm productivity and business value. Supported by the National Science Foundation (grant IIS-0085725), the MIT Center for Information Systems Research and the MIT Center for  Digital Business. The Value of Extended Enterprise Systems Collaborators: Erik Brynjolfsson, DJ Wu An eight year study of how adoption of extended enterprise systems and complimentary organizational practices impacts firm productivity and performance. A collaboration between the Georgia Institute of Technology and MIT. Past Projects The Social and Economic Explorations of Information Technology (SeeIT) Project - a five-year multidisciplinary, longitudinal study of the effects of information technology on organizational and work practices. This research is funded by the National Science Foundation grant number IIS-0085725. also see: Business Models Sub-Project - a developing framework for identifying and classifying business models by firm activities and revenue streams. IT Investment Portfolios and Firm Performance - An econometric evaluation of the relationship between strategic allocations of information technology investments and firm performance conducted through the Center for Information Systems Research at MIT. SARI (Sustainable Access in Rural India) Project - dedicated to demonstrating that the creation, deployment, and delivery of information and communication services and technologies in poor rural areas leads to improvements in health, empowerment, learning, and economic development amongst the poorest and most disadvantaged communities - and that such services can be realized in an economically sustainable fashion. VillaNet - a longitudinal assessment of the impact of access to information and communication technology and training in a low income community in South Boston. *This project is currently on hold.*
SINAN ARAL* Twitter: @sinanaral sinana@mit.edu sinan@stern.nyu.edu Curriculum Vitae Coursework Photography   Recent Awards Microsoft Faculty Fellowship 2010 PopTech Science Fellowship 2010 NSF CAREER Award 2009 IBM Faculty Award 2009 Best Overall Paper ICIS 2008 Best Dissertation   ACM SIGMIS Award, ICIS 2007 Best Overall Paper ICIS 2006 Best Paper IT Economics, ICIS 2006 Best Paper IT Business Value, ICIS 2006 Press Mentions   "Who Controls Social Networks." - Science "Dear Klout, This is How You Measure Influence" -Tech Crunch "The Rising Science of Social Influence" - Tech Crunch "Facebook Study Finds Men, Married People are Most Influential" - LA Times "Social Scientists Wade Into the Tweet Stream" - Science "Unlocking Viral Secrets on Facebook" - Fast Company "Commerce Gets Social: How Social Networks are Driving What You Buy" - Wired "Buddy System" - Wired "Mine Your Business" - Communications of the ACM "Data, Data Everywhere" - The Economist "Putting a Price on Social Connections" - Businessweek "Everything is Contagious" - Slate "Deriving Real Value from the Social Graph" - Nick Carr "Five Ways IT Can Avoid A Privacy Lawsuit" - CIO Magazine "Slow Down, Brave Multitasker, and Don't Read This in Traffic" - New York Times "What Makes Information Workers Productive?" - Sloan Management Review "The Love-In: The Move to Open Innovation is Beginning to Transform Entire Industries" - The Economist "Sinan Aral Wins NSF CAREER Award" - NYU Today Video Social Contagion - Pop Tech Networks, Information and Brokerage: The Diversity Bandwidth Tradeoff  - London School of Economics (LSE) Purpose of the Workshop on Information in Networks (WIN) - NYU Distinguishing Influence from Homophily in Dynamic Networks - NYU Information, Networks and Economic Outcomes - Harvard Using Social Data to Grow in a Down Economy - SAP Computational Social Science Panel - Harvard Modeling Social Behavior - National Institutes of Health (NIH) (The talk begins about 5 hours and 29 minutes in) Audio Viral Product Design and Identifying Peer Influence in Networks Using Randomized Trials Productivity Effects of Investments in Enterprise Software *Photo by John Santerre for PopTech		Speaking Engagements Watch Recent Talks Here: (Click on an Image) Data Gotham 2012 TEDxSV 2011 PopTech Short 2011 ICWSM Keynote 2011 Nextwork 2011 Pop Tech 2010 Older Talks: Academy of Management Conference, Montreal, CA. August 2010. KDD Workshop on Social Media Analytics, Washington, DC. July 2010. National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), Cambridge, MA. July 2010. Sunbelt Social Networks Conference, Lake Garda, IT. June 2010. Yahoo!, Sunnyvale, CA. May 2010. International Conference on Network Science. Cambridge, MA. May  2010. Microsoft, Redmond, WA. April 2010. NYU-Poly Workshop on Cloud Computing, New York, NY. April 2010. Stevens Institute of Technology. Hoboken, NJ. March 2010. Winter IS Conference, Univeristy of Utah. March 2010. MIT Center for Digital Business, Cambridge, MA. March, 2010. Wharton, Marketing Department. Philepelphia, PA. January, 2010. Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Hong Kong, January, 2010. National University of Singapore, Department of Computing. Singapore, January, 2010. Global Leaders Conference: META - The Rise and Governance of Information About Information. Singapore, January, 2010. International Conference on Information Systems. December 2009. [PDF] Workshop on Information Systems Economics. December 2009 [PDF] Harvard University, Meeting on Methodology for Empirical Research on Social Interactions, Social Networks and Health (MERSIH). Cambridge, MA. November, 2009. University of Maryland, Dept. of Decision, Operations and Information Technologies. College Park, MD. October, 2009. MIT, Center for Information Systems Research. Cambridge, MA. November, 2009. University of Chicago. Innovations, Organzations and Society Conference. Chicago, IL. October, 2009. Workshop on Information in Networks (WIN). NYU Stern School of Business. New York, NY. September, 2009. Academy of Management Conference.  Panelist: Reality Mining PDW. Chicago, IL. August, 2009. NBER Summer Institute. Cambridge, MA. July 2009. London Business School - Joint with Management Sciences and Strategy. London, UK. July 2009. London School of Economics - Department of Management. London, UK. July 2009. London School of Economics - Centre for Economic Performance. London, UK. July 2009. Conference of the Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory. Ischia, Italy. July 2009. International Conference on Network Science. Venice, Italy. July 2009. Sunbelt Social Networks Conference. March 2009 [PDF] Winter IS Conference, Univeristy of Utah. February 2009. [PDF] International Conference on Information Systems. December 2008. [PDF] Workshop on Information Systems Economics. December 2008 [PDF] National Institutes of Heath, Meeting on Modeling Social Behavior. November 2008. [PDF] SAP Academic Symposium. August 2008. [PDF] MIT, CIO Symposium and Center for Digital Business Annual Conference. May 2008. [PDF] Stanford University, Management Science & Engineering Department. January 2008. [PDF] Harvard  University, Eric M. Mindich Conference on Computational Social Science, December 2007. [Video 1; Video 2] Workshop on Information Systems Economics. December 2007 [PDF] International Conference on Information Systems. December 2007. [PDF] Informs Annual Meeting. November 2007. [PDF] Chicago Graduate School of Business. October, 2007. [PDF] Harvard Business School. October, 2007. [PDF] IBM Watson Research Center - Services Research Seminar Series. October 2007. [PDF] Academy of Management Conference. August 2007. [PDF] NBER Summer Institute. July 2007. [PDF] SAP Academic Symposium. June 2007. [PDF] International Conference on Network Science (NetSci07). May 2007. [PDF] | [PDF] Center for Digital Business, MIT. CIO Symposium and Annual Conference. May 2007. [PDF] Sunbelt Social Networks Conference. May 2007 [PDF] NBER Productivity Program Meeting. March 2007. [PDF] Winter IS Conference, Univeristy of Utah. February 2007. [PDF] Center for Digital Business, MIT- Information Worker Productivity Workshop. February 2007. [PDF] | [PDF] TRIUM Program, NYU. January 2007. [PDF] Workshop on Information Systems Economics. December 2006 [PDF] International Conference on Information Systems. December 2006 [PDF] | [PDF] Center for Digital Business Lunch Series, MIT. November 2006 [PDF] Yahoo! Social Networks Workshop, July 2006. [PDF] Affiliated Research Centers