Gizem Korkmaz

Gizem Korkmaz is an Associate Professor at the Social and Decision Analytics Division (SDAD) of the Biocomplexity Institute and Initiative at the University of Virginia. She is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics at Virginia Tech. Her research focuses on social and economic networks, involving mathematical and computational modeling, and empirical analysis. Gizem received her Ph.D. in Economics at the European University Institute in 2012. Her Ph.D. dissertation spans game theory and network theory; focuses on the interplay between the network structure and strategic decision-making.

She contributed extensively to network science, game theory, social network analysis, text analysis, and behavioral economics. Network science contributions (both mathematical modeling and empirical analysis) include applications in collaboration networks (e.g., GitHub), online social networks (e.g., Twitter, Facebook), communication networks, among others. She is the principal investigator (PI) of the Minerva Initiative Research grant titled, "The Dynamics of Common Knowledge on Social Networks: An Experimental Approach," funded by the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research. She was also Co-PI of two projects as part of DARPA programs: Computational Simulation of Online Social Behavior (SocialSim) and Next Generation Social Science (NGS2). She was selected as the 2016 Outstanding New Faculty by Virginia Tech Northern Capital Region Faculty Association. During the postdoctoral research position at the Network Dynamics and Simulation Science Laboratory (now UVA Biocomplexity Institute’s Network Systems Science and Advanced Computing division), Dr. Korkmaz developed network-based statistical models that use multiple data sources such as social media including Twitter, news/blogs to predict critical societal events (protests, strikes) in targeted Latin American countries as part of IARPA's (Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency) Open Source Indicator program. Activities resulted in publications in journals and peer-reviewed proceedings, and three Intellectual Properties (“Volume-Based Model for Protest Forecasting;” “Social Media Activity and Recruitment Based Model for Protest Forecasting;” “Civil Unrest Vocabulary.” Disclosure Date: 10/26/2016).

Supported by the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES) at the NSF, Dr. Korkmaz has been leading research projects focused on measurement of innovation activities, in particular of open source software innovation and business innovation using non-survey opportunity data (online registries, repositories, news articles, and financial statements of companies and databases). Current findings have been published in journals including the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), and presented at Harvard University Digital Initiative Seminar Series, and international conferences such as the General Conference of the International Association for Research in Income and Wealth (IARIW), and the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Conference on Research in Income and Wealth (CRIW) on Big Data for 21st Century Economic Statistics.

The hallmark of her research is to integrate her background in economics with data science by blending traditional and novel data sources (e.g., social media) and methods (e.g., network analysis, machine learning) to ask how we can make data useful for people and communities. She is passionate about the development of a workforce using data science to contribute to community-based research. She is the co-director of UVA’s Data Science for the Public Good Young Scholars Program and led the of launch a Young Scholars program in Turkey.

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