Meysam Alizadeh

Meysam Alizadeh

Postdoctoral Fellow
Center for Complex Networks and Systems Research
School of Informatics and Computing
Indiana University

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Bio:

Born in Iran in 1985, Meysam Alizadeh received a BS and an MS in Industrial Engineering from Amirkabir University of Technology and an MS in Information Science from the University of Pittsburgh before joining George Mason University’s Computational Social Science PhD program in fall 2013. He received his PhD from GMU in 2016 and is a postdoctoral fellow at CNetS since September 2016 working under supervision of Professor Santo Fortunato.

Meysam’s research interests focus broadly around political extremism,opinion dynamics, social influence, and intergroup relationships. Methodologically, he integrates innovative information and communication technologies in political science, sociology, and policy analysis to study these interests. More specifically, he uses a mix of approaches ranging from agent-based modeling, Big Data analytics, social network and social media analysis, and text as data methods to explore various drivers of social influence, opinion change, and opinion extremism in the society.

Academic Positions:

  • 2016 – present: Postdoc at CNetS
  • 2013 – 2016: Presidential Scholar, George Mason University, VA, USA.
  • 2015 (July): Visiting Scholar, Qatar Computing Research Institute, Doha, Qatar.
  • 2015 (Summer Semester): Research Assistant to Prof. Claudio Cioffi-Revilla, Center for Social Complexity, George Mason University, VA, USA.
  • 2015 (Spring Semester): Visiting Scholar, Social Dynamics Lab, Cornell University, NY, USA.
  • 2010 – 2012: Research Assistant to Prof. Michael Lewis, School of Information Science, University of Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
  • 2009 – 2010: Instructor, Department of Information Systems, University of Maryland Baltimore County, MD, USA.

Selected Publications:

  • Meysam Alizadeh, Ingmar Weber, Claudio Cioffi-Revilla, Santo Fortunato, Michael Macy (2017) Psychological and Personality Profiles of Political Extremists, arXiv preprint arXiv:1704.00119.
  • Meysam Alizadeh, Claudio Cioffi-Revilla, and Andrew Crooks (2016) Generating and Analyzing Spatial Social Networks. Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, 23(3), 362-390.
  • Alizadeh, Meysam, Cioffi-Revilla, Claudio (2015). Activation Regimes in Opinion Dynamics: More Contact Between Radicals and Others can Reduce Extremism. Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation. Forthcoming in June issue.
  • Alizadeh, Meysam, Cioffi-Revilla, Claudio, and Crooks, Andrew (2015). The Effect of In-Group Favoritism on the Collective Behavior of Individuals’ Opinions. Advances in Complex Systems, 18.
  • Alizadeh, Meysam, Coman, Alin, Lewis, Michael and Cioffi-Revilla, Claudio (2014). Intergroup Conflict Escalation Leads to more Extremism. Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation 17(4), 4.