CAPS Town Hall presents: Lindsay Young, PhD -- Social Network Analysis and Machine Learning: Computational Partners in the Study of HIV Prevention and Risk Online

As transmitters of information and progenitors of behavioral norms, social networks are critical mechanisms of HIV prevention and risk in impacted populations like men who have sex with men (MSM), people who inject drugs (PWID), and homeless youth. Today, widespread use of online social networking technologies (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, Twitter) yield unprecedented amounts of relational and communication data far richer than anything previously collected in offline (physical) network settings. However, parsing these complex data into tractable insights and intervention opportunities requires an innovative and flexible computational toolkit that extends beyond traditional approaches. In this talk, Dr. Young will discuss her ongoing efforts to unpack how HIV prevention and risk manifest in the online social networks of young MSM of color using a hybrid of computational methods that include social and semantic network analysis and machine learning approaches for textual analysis and predictive modeling.  She will conclude with a discussion of the practical implications of this work and directions for future research.

Dr. Lindsay Young is Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of Chicago Department of Medicine and Chicago Center for HIV Elimination (CCHE) and an affiliate member of the Center for Applied Network Analysis (CANA) at USC.  Her current research is funded by a NIH Pathway to Independence Award (K99/R00) from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). She received her Ph.D. in Communication Studies from Northwestern University.