I’m very fortunate to be affiliated with the Institute for Advanced Computational Science at Stony Brook University, through my advisor Arnout van de Rijt.
This is a great opportunity to expand my research with “big data” capabilities. As a critical-reflexive sociologist, I am wary of the the over-exuberance surrounding this latest trend in science; given the choice, I always prefer better, richer, or more meaningful data rather than simply more data. However, I am very excited about the Institute’s focus on inter-disciplinary collaboration, as well as the obvious methodological sophistication that comes with advanced modeling and statistical computing.
Here is an excellent short talk by Arnout about how the IACS will benefit sociologists trying to better understand the social world: