BU Research Blog

I am delighted to share with you good news about the small grant that I was awarded from the Grants Academy at BU. It will help me to develop my research in the area of predictive analysis of complex networks.
The main goal of the project that will be a result of this small grant is to develop a robust and adaptive framework for Predictive Analysis of Complex Social Networks. Sound mysterious and you are probably asking so what?
Let me give you some background. For the first time in history, we have the possibility to process big social data about the interactions and activities of millions of individuals that can be represented as a social network. It represents an increasingly important resource yet is underutilised due to the scale, complexity and dynamics of these structures which makes them extremely difficult to model and analyse. As only recently the development of ICT technology has made collecting this data feasible, there is no coherent and comprehensive approach to analyse such networks and their dynamics which is crucial to advance our understanding of continuously changing people’s behaviour. It means that we need new approaches that will enable us to analyse and predict the future of social networks.

And now the next question that you are asking is probably: so why is it important?
Again, let me give you some examples that shed a little bit of light onto importance of my study:
a) Improving national security
The outcomes of this project will be applied in a collaborative research, with a visiting researcher, Prof. De Meo from the University of Messina, Italy, focused on Cosa Nostra analytics, for understanding of the organisation of Mafia syndicates. Application of my framework for Predictive Analysis of Complex Social Networks will contribute to the improvement of well-being and security of citizens. Results of this joint cross-disciplinary research will help law enforcement agencies and policy makers to more efficiently allocate resources in the fight against Mafia
b) Improving health and well-being
The results will also be applied in the cross-disciplinary collaborative research with a visiting researcher, Dr De Ruddere from the Ghent University, Belgium, to understand the social exclusion of patients with chronic pain. Application of my framework will facilitate the understanding of how the social networks of people with chronic pain evolve over time contributing to the improvement of the patients’ quality of life and social well-being.

If you would like to have a chat and hear more about my research please keep in touch: kmusialgabrys@bournemouth.ac.uk