Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University

March 2, 2008

Two year positions available as part of research program investigating privacy and data sharing, public health, and the diffusion of innovations within the context of advanced mobile devices. The program will deploy 'smart phones' within medium-sized residential and academic communities, offering users 'next generation' services in return for assessing their use patterns. The researcher filling the first position should approach this research program from the perspective of social science, asking how social structure is reflected in users' patterns of behavior. The researcher filling the second position should approach the program from a computer science perspective, asking how we can infer user's privacy, sharing, and interest profiles from their behavior, and then how we can use these inferences to enhance data privacy, accountability, and security. Both positions require hands-on individuals with relevant computer skills who will help build and manage the infrastrucure needed to deploy the experimental testbed and to assess user behaviors. Send CV to pentland@mit.edu