Research
I am currently working on Topic Diffusion in Social Networks.
This work is primarily concerned with modeling dynamics of topics
spreading in a social network and analyzing the virality of topics, why
some topics go viral, while others die out rapidly. We have a
theoretical model to simulate social network dynamics with a continuous
stream of exogenous topics competing to enter into and diffuse through
the network. The model is being
tested on a synthetic social network graph that follows the Watts & Strogatz (Small World) Graph Model. There is an implicit competition between the topics as they vie for the attention of the users. We use Mean Field Theory
for analyzing the dynamics of the process. Our Model has several
parameters which can be classified into 2 groups:- topology parameters
and dynamics parameters. We explore these 2 parameter spaces and look
for virality. We look at several metrics of the topic diffusion like
the lifetime, spread of topics, cluster formation & merging, graph modularity to analyze virality of topics.
Besides this, I am also interested to work on areas like Network Algorithms, Data Structures, Modeling & Analysis of large-scale Networks & Data Mining.