Yuan Yuan is a PhD Candidate in the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS) at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He researches social and economic networks by applying cutting-edge computational methods, including machine learning, causal inference, and experimental design, to large-scale network data. He is especially interested in how social ties are formed and stabilized, and how social ties mediate social contagion, social exchange, prosocial behavior, and information diffusion. Yuan’s thesis advisor is Prof. Sandy Pentland. Yuan considers himself as a computational social scientist who cares a lot about research methodology.