Speakers

Duncan Watts is a computational social scientist interested in social and organizational networks, collective dynamics of human systems, web-based experiments, and analysis of large-scale digital data, including the production, consumption, and absorption of news. He is the Stevens University Professor and Penn Integrates Knowledge University Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, where he directs the Computational Social Science Lab. Professor Watts holds appointments in the Annenberg School for Communication, the Department of Computer and Information Science in the School of Engineering and Applied Science, and the Department of Operations, Information and Decisions in the Wharton School. Previously, he was a principal researcher and founding member of the Microsoft Research NYC lab, an A.D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell, a professor of Sociology at Columbia, and a principal research scientist at Yahoo! Research, where he led the Human Social Dynamics group. Professor Watts is the author of three books: Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age (W.W. Norton 2003), Small Worlds: The Dynamics of Networks Between Order and Randomness (Princeton University Press 1999), and Everything Is Obvious: Once You Know The Answer (Crown Business 2011). He holds a B.Sc. in Physics from the Australian Defence Force Academy, from which he also received his officer’s commission in the Royal Australian Navy, and a Ph.D. in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics from Cornell University. He was named an inaugural fellow of the Network Science Society in 2018, a Carnegie Fellow in 2020, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2021, and the National Academy of Science in 2023.