Gizem Korkmaz is an Associate Professor at the Social and Decision Analytics Division (SDAD) of the Biocomplexity Institute & Initiative at the University of Virginia. She is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics at Virginia Tech. Her research focuses on social and economic networks, involving mathematical and computational modeling, and empirical analysis. Gizem received her PhD in Economics at the European University Institute in 2012. Her PhD dissertation spans game theory and network theory; focuses on the interplay between the network structure and strategic decision-making.

She is the principal investigator (PI) of 2016 Minerva research project titled “The Dynamics of Common Knowledge on Social Networks: An Experimental Approach.” She is also Co-PI of two projects as part of DARPA programs: Computational Simulation of Online Social Behavior (SocialSim) and Next Generation Social Science (NGS2). She was selected as the 2016 Outstanding New Faculty by Virginia Tech Northern Capital Region Faculty Association. During the postdoctoral research position at the Network Dynamics and Simulation Science Laboratory, she contributed to the EMBERS project, as part of IARPA’s (The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency) Open Source Indicator program. She developed network-based and statistical models that use multiple data sources such as social media including Twitter, news/blogs in order to predict critical societal events (protests, strikes) and election results in targeted Latin American countries.

The hallmark of her research is to blend her knowledge in traditional economics with big data using tools from social network analysis and machine learning. She works with traditional as well as novel data sources (e.g., social media, 911, Fire/EMS, patient records, census) to ask how we can make data useful for people and communities.