Duncan J. Watts

Duncan Watts

Watts presenting at iCitizen 2008
Born Duncan James Watts
(1971-02-20) February 20, 1971[1]
Guelph, Ontario[1]
Residence New York City
Nationality Australia
Fields Sociology, network science
Institutions Columbia University
Microsoft Research
Santa Fe Institute
Yahoo! Research
Nuffield College, Oxford[2]
Alma mater University of New South Wales
Cornell University (PhD)
Thesis The structure and dynamics of small-world systems (1997)
Doctoral advisor Steven Strogatz[3]
Doctoral students Gueorgi Kossinets
Roby Muhamad
Matthew Salganik [3]
Known for Watts and Strogatz model
Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age[4]
Website
research.microsoft.com/en-us/people/duncan

Duncan James Watts (born 1971) is a sociologist and principal researcher at Microsoft Research, New York City known for his work on small-world networks.[5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17]

Education

Watts received a Bachelor of Science degree in physics from the University of New South Wales and a Ph.D.[1] from Cornell University.

Career

Watts was past external faculty member of the Santa Fe Institute and a former professor of sociology at Columbia University, where he headed the Collective Dynamics Group.[18] He is author of the book Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age[4] and Everything is Obvious *Once You Know the Answer: How Common Sense Fails Us.[19] The six degrees research is based on his 1998 paper with Steven Strogatz in which the two presented a mathematical theory of the small world phenomenon.[20]

Until April 2012, he was a principal research scientist at Yahoo! Research, where he directed the Human Social Dynamics group.[21] Watts joined Microsoft Research in New York City by its opening on May 3, 2012.[22][23]

Watts describes his research as exploring the "role that network structure plays in determining or constraining system behavior, focusing on a few broad problem areas in social science such as information contagion, financial risk management, and organizational design."[24] More recently he has attracted attention for his modern-day replication of Stanley Milgram's small world experiment using email messages and for his studies of popularity and fads in on-line and other communities.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Watts, Duncan James (1997). The structure and dynamics of small-world systems (PhD thesis). Cornell University.
  2. http://everythingisobvious.com/the-author
  3. 1 2 Duncan J. Watts at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  4. 1 2 Watts, Duncan (2003). Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-04142-5.
  5. Watts, D. J. (1999). "Networks, Dynamics, and the Small‐World Phenomenon". American Journal of Sociology 105 (2): 493–527. doi:10.1086/210318.
  6. Watts, D. J.; Dodds, P. S.; Newman, M. E. (2002). "Identity and Search in Social Networks". Science 296 (5571): 1302–1305. arXiv:cond-mat/0205383. Bibcode:2002Sci...296.1302W. doi:10.1126/science.1070120. PMID 12016312.
  7. Watts, D. J. (2002). "A simple model of global cascades on random networks". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 99 (9): 5766–5720. Bibcode:2002PNAS...99.5766W. doi:10.1073/pnas.082090499.
  8. Dodds, P. S.; Muhamad, R.; Watts, D. J. (2003). "An Experimental Study of Search in Global Social Networks". Science 301 (5634): 827–829. Bibcode:2003Sci...301..827D. doi:10.1126/science.1081058. PMID 12907800.
  9. Watts, D. J. (2004). "The "New" Science of Networks". Annual Review of Sociology 30: 243–270. doi:10.1146/annurev.soc.30.020404.104342.
  10. Dodds, P.; Watts, D. (2004). "Universal Behavior in a Generalized Model of Contagion". Physical Review Letters 92 (21). arXiv:cond-mat/0403699. Bibcode:2004PhRvL..92u8701D. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.92.218701.
  11. Watts, D. J. (2005). "Multiscale, resurgent epidemics in a hierarchical metapopulation model". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 102 (32): 11157–11162. Bibcode:2005PNAS..10211157W. doi:10.1073/pnas.0501226102. PMC 1183543. PMID 16055564.
  12. Duncan J. Watts's publications indexed by the DBLP Bibliography Server at the University of Trier
  13. List of publications from Microsoft Academic Search
  14. Duncan J. Watts's publications indexed by Google Scholar, a service provided by Google
  15. Duncan J. Watts from the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Digital Library
  16. Duncan J. Watts's publications indexed by the Scopus bibliographic database, a service provided by Elsevier.
  17. Clive Thompson (February 2008). "Is the Tipping Point Toast?". Fast Company. Retrieved 2008-02-25.
  18. CDG Collective Dynamics Group
  19. Watts, Duncan (2011). Everything Is Obvious: *Once You Know the Answer: How Common Sense Fails Us. New York: Crown Business. ISBN 0-385-53168-0.
  20. Watts, D. J.; Strogatz, S. H. (1998). "Collective dynamics of 'small-world' networks" (PDF). Nature 393 (6684): 440–442. Bibcode:1998Natur.393..440W. doi:10.1038/30918. PMID 9623998.
  21. Herald Sun. Australian social-network researcher Duncan Watts leaves Yahoo.
  22. Floridia, Richard. "Why Microsoft Chose New York City", The Atlantic: Cities, 2 May 2012. Retrieved on 8 May 2012.
  23. Knies, Rob. "Microsoft Research Microsoft Research Debuts N.Y.C. Lab", Microsoft Research, 7 May 2012. Retrieved on 8 May 2012.
  24. Home page of Duncan Watts at Yahoo Research
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