  Colloquium SeriesMAPSS is proud to announce the inauguration of a new colloquium series in 2007. 2007-2008 MAPSS colloquium series - Spring Schedule
Lunch will be served at 11:45 for those who have RSVP'd; the talks start at noon. Speaker Bios / Talk Abstracts (as available)
Laurent El GhaouiBio: Laurent El Ghaoui graduated from Ecole Polytechnique (Palaiseau, France) in 1985, and obtained his PhD in Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford University in March 1990. He was a faculty member of the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Techniques Avancées (Paris, France) from 1992 until 1999, and held part-time teaching appointments at Ecole Polytechnique within the Applied Mathematics department and Université de Paris-I (La Sorbonne) in the Mathematics in Economy program. In 1998, he was awarded the Bronze Medal for Engineering Sciences, from the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France. He joined the Berkeley faculty in April 1999 as an Acting Associate Professor, and obtained his tenure in May 2001. He went on leave from UC between July 2003 and September 2006 to work for SAC Capital Management, a hedge fund based in New York and Connecticut. Abstract for the Talk: Each day we are inundated with an avalanche of online news. Yet is is currently hard to obtain a global view of this information. What are the images that various news media project about specific topics, such as global warming, human rights or presidential candidates? How do these images evolve over time? How do they differ across different media sources, scientific or mainstream? What are the dynamics of news events across news networks?
Francoise BourdonnecBio: Françoise Bourdonnec is Director of the Domestic Designs and Technologies Research team for Intel's Digital Home Group. This inter-disciplinary team of design, social science and quantitative researchers develops a clear & actionable understanding of daily life in a range of countries all over the world in order to identify platform opportunities & influence corporate and DHG strategic direction and planning. Françoise has done fieldwork in the US, France, Russia and Australia, and has degrees in Anthropology (PSU), International Management (Thunderbird) and Finance (Ecole Supérieure de Commerce de Paris). She has been with Intel since 1991. Abstract for the Talk: Qualitative social sciences, such as ethnography, are often challenged to influence in heavily data-oriented environments. After reviewing our ethnographic research methods and their theoretical framing, I will explore how to most effectively mobilize the research findings in organizations which are used to dealing in quantitative data. The multiple paths to influence engineering and design teams require different a different presentation of data, and upon occasion different methodologies. Case studies drawn from Intel’s Digital Home Group will illustrate options to achieve the business goals: using research to drive changes in practice and results.
Jeremy BailensonBio: Jeremy Bailenson earned a B.A. cum laude from the University of Michigan in 1994 and a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from Northwestern University in 1999. After receiving his doctorate, he spent four years at the Research Center for Virtual Environments and Behavior at the University of California, Santa Barbara as a Post-Doctoral Fellow and then an Assistant Research Professor. He currently is the director of Stanford's Virtual Human Interaction Lab. Bailenson's main area of interest is the phenomenon of digital human representation, especially in the context of immersive virtual reality. He explores the manner in which people are able to represent themselves when the physical constraints of body and veridically-rendered behaviors are removed. Furthermore, he designs and studies collaborative virtual reality systems that allow physically remote individuals to meet in virtual space, and explores the manner in which these systems change the nature of verbal and nonverbal interaction. His work has been published in several academic journals, including Cognitive Psychology, Discourse Processes, Human Communication Research, Psychological Science, and PRESENCE: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, and his research is funded by the National Science Foundation, Stanford University, and by various Silicon Valley and international corporations. From: Department of Communication Abstract for the Talk: Historically, at least 3 methodological problems have dogged experimental social psychology: the experimental control-mundane realism trade-off, lack of replication, and unrepresentative sampling. We argue that immersive virtual environment technology (IVET) can help ameliorate, if not solve, these methodological problems and, thus, holds promise as a newsocial psychological research tool. In this article,we first present an overview of IVET and review IVET-based research within psychology and other fields. Next, we propose a general model of social influence within immersive virtual environments and present some preliminary findings regarding its utility for social psychology. Finally, we present a new paradigm for experimental social psychology that may enable researchers to unravel the very fabric of social interaction. Abstract taken from the paper: Immersive Virtual Environment Technology as a Methodological Tool for Social Psychology (pdf)
Paul AllisonBio: Paul Allison is Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania where he primarily teaches graduate-level methods and statistics. He is the author of several books and numerous articles on applied statistical methods, including Fixed Effects Regression Methods for Longitudinal Data Using SAS (2005), Missing Data (2001), Logistic Regression Using SAS (1999), and Survival Analysis Using SAS (1995). Much of his earlier research was focused on career patterns of academic scientists. A former Guggenheim Fellow, Allison received the 2001 Lazarsfeld Award for distinguished contributions to sociological methodology. Abstract for the Talk: This talk is a gentle introduction to the use of multiple imputation for handling missing data in social science research. After a brief review of conventional methods, we will examine the basic principles of multiple imputation, and will then work through a detailed example using PROC MI in SAS. Because this method assumes multivariate normality, the appropriate treatment of categorical variables will be considered. A second example uses the ICE command in Stata. Although this method is more appropriate for categorical variables, it comes with some theoretical and computational costs.
Vani HendersonBio: Quantitative Marketing, Google Abstract for the Talk: TBA The series has at least four purposes:
Last updated 09-Apr-2008 |
