Sonic Lab at Northwestern University

We’re excited to spotlight Creative Agency in the Age of AI, happening Friday, March 6, from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. at the Frances Searle Building, Center for Human-Computer Interaction + Design (Room 1-122), 2240 Campus Drive.

As AI tools become collaborators in writing, research, music, design, and movement, they are reshaping what it means to be creative. This event brings together researchers and artists to examine an important question: how can we ensure AI supports human creativity without diminishing human agency?

Throughout the day, participants will explore how AI can influence creative decision-making, teamwork, interface design, and the future of human-AI collaboration across the arts and beyond. The program will feature demos, panels, interdisciplinary discussion, and a speed-writing session focused on imagining more empowering futures for creative work. We’re especially proud to see this event organized by Duri Long, Noshir Contractor, and Karan Ahuja.

More info: https://www.hci.northwestern.edu/news-events/colloquia-special-events/hci-d-ai-symposia-2026/creative-agency-in-the-age-of-ai.html

Proud to share that three Northwestern undergraduates—Shraeya Iyer, Jeffrey Tu, and Isabel Su—will be presenting at NetSciX (Feb 17–20, 2026) in New Zealand. Their paper is based on research supported by the Buffett Center and the Undergraduate Research Scholarship (Roberta Buffett Institute for Global Affairs).

Talk: A Multiplex Lens on Influencer Performance, Group Synergy, and Network Centralization (https://openreview.net/pdf?id=fTdi2HJTxR)

Co-authors: Megan Chan, Noshir Contractor

Conference details: https://netscix2026.github.io/

Congratulations to Shraeya, Jeffrey, and Isabel on representing Northwestern and sharing their work with the network science community!

Excited to share our new article in Research Policy with Noshir Contractor, Pamela Hinds, Aaron Schecter, and Elisa Mattarelli. We found that in open innovation communities, it's not just who gives you feedback — it's who they're connected to. Ideas that receive feedback from well-connected contributors gain visibility, legitimacy, and alignment that boost their innovation potential. We call this "secondhand social capital," and it turns out to be a stronger predictor of idea quality than traditional network measures.

Check it out:

www.sciencedirect.com

SIAM News just published new work by Diego Gómez Zará and Noshir Contractor on:

Can AI help build teams that are both more representative and more effective—without removing human choice?

They frame team formation as multi-objective optimization, balancing variety (skills/backgrounds) with familiarity (existing ties), using NSGA-II to generate a Pareto set of strong tradeoffs rather than a single “best” team.

In a large-scale MyDreamTeam experiment (380+ participants), creativity was highest when people retained agency in choosing teammates while the system provided representation-aware recommendations—positioning AI as a structured nudge that broadens collaboration rather than replacing human judgment.

Read Here: https://www.siam.org/publications/siam-news/articles/can-artificial-intelligence-help-build-better-more-representative-teams/

New research challenges a common assumption about shared leadership: that two leaders are better than one.

In an in-press study by Leslie DeChurch, Alina Lungeanu, Megan Chan, and Noshir Contractor, researchers analyze data from NASA space analog teams and Ancient Rome (32 BCE–491 CE) to examine the stability of shared leadership over time.

The findings reveal a striking pattern: while single-leader structures and shared leadership among three or more leaders tend to persist, dyadic shared leadership (two leaders) is uniquely unstable—a phenomenon the authors term “dyadic instability.”

For organizations considering co-leadership models, the takeaway is clear: how leadership is structured matters.

Read the full article (in press): https://journals.aom.org/doi/abs/10.5465/amd.2025.0028

Kellogg Insight has just published a deep dive into groundbreaking research by Noshir Contractorand Leslie DeChurch on how to keep teams functioning effectively during long-duration space missions.

For nearly a decade, the researchers have worked with NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration, analyzing data from Earth-based Mars mission simulations in Houston and Moscow. Their models—CREWS, SCALE, and the new TEAMSTaR dashboard—identify the five critical markers of successful team dynamics in extreme, isolated environments:

These insights are now helping NASA design the next generation of space crews: teams capable of surviving and thriving on a three-year mission to Mars with limited communication, total confinement, and no backup plan.
And the impact doesn’t stop in space. The same tools designed to support astronauts are already inspiring new approaches to teamwork and leadership here on Earth.

Read "Houston, We Have a Solution" to learn how NASA and Northwestern researchers are shaping the future of human collaboration—in space and beyond: https://lnkd.in/e6ST5dE8

We’re excited to share that Dr. Noshir Contractor, former President of the International Communication Association (ICA) and a pioneer in network science, computational social science, and web science, will be speaking at the MU–ICA Conference 2025.

Dr. Contractor’s work explores how knowledge networks form and perform across different contexts. We’re honored to have him as an inaugural speaker, where he will unpack the social architecture of the digital infrastructures shaping our world.

📅 MU–ICA Conference on Human & Digital Mutualism
🗓 21–22 November 2025
📍 Mahindra University, Hyderabad

We’re proud to share that Professor Noshir Contractor, Director of the SONIC Research Lab at Northwestern University, delivered a keynote at the 2025 ICA Regional Conference.

Conference Theme:
Diversity and Globalization of Communication Studies in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Keynote Speech:
🗓 October 21 | 🕑 2:00–2:20 PM
|📍 University of Science and Technology of China
“Generative AI in Research: Challenges, Opportunities, and Innovations”

Thank you to Mengxiao Zhu and the International Communication Association (ICA Official Page) for convening this meaningful conversation around AI, trust, and the future of communication research.

We’re excited to share a new publication co-authored by SONIC’s Director Noshir Contractor, alongside Diego Gomez-Zara, Dr. Liz Ge**er, Darren Gergle, Kapil Garg, Ph.D. , and Michael Massimi. Instead of asking “Where should we work?”, this paper argues we should be asking “How can we work more effectively when we’re distributed?”

Based on a theoretically grounded survey of 1,526 U.S.-based knowledge workers, the authors identify five factors that shape remote and hybrid collaboration:

• Teams don’t need close personal relationships, but they do need a strong sense of belonging.

• Managers value observability, while workers value autonomy, making open dialogue and trust essential.

• Hybrid teams face more friction than fully remote teams when norms across work modalities are unclear.

• Small tech issues can derail collaboration, demonstrating the need for shared tool-use practices.

• Highly collaborative work relies on clear team norms, which should be set early and revisited as teams evolve.

If you’d like to learn more-
Read Here:

What Remotely Matters? Understanding Individual, Team, and Organizational Factors in Remote Work at Scale | Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction Although knowledge workers are increasingly able to adopt remote and hybrid working arrangements and work productively, many organizations continue to question the effectiveness of remote work and focus on its concerns and challenges. Previous CSCW ...

Last week, SONIC Lab had the pleasure of welcoming back Anup S a proud SONIC alum (2010-2017) and Founder of Pyrack!

Anup delivered an inspiring presentation about leveraging artificial intelligence to drive innovation and efficiency through bespoke solutions showcasing how AI continues to shape industries in creative and meaningful ways.

It was an honor to have him share his journey from SONIC to founding Pyrack and to discuss how emerging technologies are transforming how we think, work, and collaborate.

Thank you, Anup, for reconnecting with our community and inspiring the next generation of SONIC researchers!

SONIC Lab started the school year on a high note at the IEMS Welcome Back celebration!

We’re proud to share that our very own Megan Chan received the IEMS Teaching Assistant Award for her outstanding contributions during the 2024–2025 academic year.

Congratulations, Megan — we’re so lucky to have you on the SONIC team, and we can’t wait to see all that you accomplish this year!