Social Networks and Cyberinfrastructure (SNAC)

The Role of Social Network Research in Enabling Cyberinfrastructure
and the Role of Cyberinfrastructure in Enabling Social Network Research

Nov. 3-5, 2005
National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA)
1205 W. Clark St.
Urbana, Illinois 61801
Directions to the SNAC Conference

The goal of this National Science Foundation-funded workshop is to set out a research roadmap for the future of the relationship between social network analysis and cyberinfrastructure. For the first time, leading international researchers and practitioners in social network analysis will be brought together with the scientists and technologists who are developing cyberinfrastructure for their research communities.

Participants will develop recommendations to accomplish two distinct, but related, tasks:

• Task 1: The identification of ways in which theoretical and methodological insights from recent advances in social network analysis can inform the development of cyberinfrastructure to enable networks within distributed communities of scientists, educators, and practitioners. The workshop will acquaint the scientific and engineering community with the potential of social networking tools to enhance communication and knowledge networks within communities supported by cyberinfrastructure.


• Task 2: The idetification of ways in which cyberinfrastructure can help the community of social network researchers address grand challenges in network science. The workshop will assess the viability and contours of developing a Social Network Analysis Cyberinfrastructure (SNAC) for advancing network analysis, modeling, visualization research, practice, and education.

Noshir Contractor, leader of the Science of Networks in Communities (SONIC) research group at NCSA, and Katy Börner, leader of the InfoVis Lab at Indiana University, handled planning for the SNAC workshop. Hank Green, also a member of the SONIC research group at NCSA, handled local arrangements.

The SNAC workshop is supported by National Science Foundation Grant No. SCI-0533892 (Program Officer: Dr. Miriam Heller, Office of Cyberinfrastructure).

Any opinions, findings, conclusions, and recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

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©2006 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois.

Last updated January 24, 2006