Noshir Contractor

Noshir Contractor is the Jane S. & William J. White Professor of Behavioral Sciences in the McCormick School of Engineering & Applied Science, the School of Communication and the Kellogg School of Management and Director of the Science of Networks in Communities (SONIC) Research Group at Northwestern University. He is also the President-Elect-Select of the International Communication Association (ICA).

Professor Contractor has been at the forefront of three emerging interdisciplines: network science, computational social science and web science. He is investigating how social and knowledge networks form – and perform – in contexts including business, scientific communities, healthcare and space travel. His research has been funded continuously for 25 years by the U.S. National Science Foundation with additional funding from the U.S. National Institutes of Health, NASA, DARPA, Army Research Laboratory and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

His book Theories of Communication Networks (co-authored with Peter Monge) received the 2003 Book of the Year award from the Organizational Communication Division of the National Communication Association. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). He also received the Distinguished Scholar Award from the National Communication Association and the Lifetime Service Award from the Organizational Communication & Information Systems Division of the Academy of Management. In 2018 he received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras where he received a Bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering. He received his Ph.D. from the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Southern California.

Education

• Ph.D, 1987, Communication, University of Southern California
• M.A., 1986, Communication, University of Southern California
• B. Tech, 1983, Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology

Academic Positions

• Jane S. & William J. White Professor of Behavioral Sciences, Departments of Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences Communication Studies, and Management, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, 2007-present
• Professor of Speech Communication, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2001-2007
• Director, Team Engineering Collaboratory, Department of Speech Communication, University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign, 1991-2007
• Director, Computing and Instructional Laboratories, Department of Speech Communication, University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign, 1987-2007
• Associate Professor of Speech Communication, University of Illi nois at Urbana - Champaign, 1993-2001
• Assistant Professor of Speech Communication, University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign, 1987-1993

Awards

• Best Conference Poster Award for "The MyDreamTeam Builder: A Recommender System for Assembling & Enabling Effective Teams", Interdisciplinary Network for Group Research
• Top Paper Award for Murase, T., Asencio, R., McDonald, J., Poole, M. S., DeChurch, L. A., & Contractor, N. S. (2015). The Effect of Entrainment of Group Processes on Multiteam System Effectiveness, National Communication Association
• International Communication Association Fellow, International Communication Association

Editorial Positions

• Associate Editor, Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, 2013
• Editor for Communication, Engineering & Management, Network Science, 2012
• Member of Editorial Board, Human Communication Research, 2010