Dashun Wang

Dec 19, 2024 | nature.com | Dashun Wang

AbstractUnderstanding the collective dynamics behind the success of ideas, products, behaviors, and social actors is critical for decision-making across diverse contexts, including hiring, funding, career choices, and the design of interventions for social change. Methodological advances and the increasing availability of big data now allow for a broader and deeper understanding of the key facets of success.

Oct 11, 2024 | insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu | Dashun Wang

Artificial intelligence, one of science’s crowning achievements, is poised to come full circle to revolutionize science itself. Indeed, some AI systems have already tackled vexing scientific problems, like predicting the structure of proteins (an advance that was recently recognized with a Nobel Prize) and discovering novel mathematical algorithms. With the technology rapidly advancing, there is every reason to believe that its impact will only grow over time.

Jun 26, 2024 | nature.com | Dashun Wang

From the Internet to CRISPR–Cas9 gene editing, many seeds of progress were planted initially in the ivory tower of academia. Could research be doing even more for society? I argue that it could — if universities used artificial intelligence (AI) tools to maximize the impact of their scientists’ outputs. Each year, millions of grant proposals, preprints and research papers are produced, along with patents, clinical trials and drug approvals.

Feb 19, 2024 | insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu | Benjamin Jones |Brian Uzzi |Dashun Wang

Scientists often make sense of the world by breaking it into parts, and then studying those parts. But a newer scientific discipline is examining the whole picture—with the help of big data and artificial intelligence. It’s called complexity science. Complexity science is the study of systems that are…well, complex! Think: the human brain, the global climate, ecosystems, and the universe. It’s all about zooming out from one part to see how all the parts work in a system.

Feb 12, 2024 | insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu | Benjamin Jones |Brian Uzzi |Dashun Wang

Scientists, trying to make sense of a complicated world, have historically tried to simplify things. For instance, running an experiment generally involves holding a lot of variables constant, and then tweaking one or two at a time to see what happens. But over time, as technology has improved, we have gotten better at collecting and analyzing data. A lot better. In response, a new approach to making sense of complicated phenomena—a new scientific discipline, really—has started to take off.