Duncan Watts writes:

The Human Social Dynamics Group in Yahoo Research is seeking highly qualified candidates for a post-doctoral research scientist position.

The Human and Social Dynamics group is devoted to understanding the interplay between individual-level behavior (e.g. how people make decisions about what music they like, which dates to go on, or which groups to join) and the social environment in which individual behavior necessarily plays itself out. In particular, we are interested in:

* Structure and evolution of social groups and networks
* Decision making, social influence, diffusion, and collective decisions
* Networking and collaborative problem solving.

The intrinsically multi-disciplinary and cross-cutting nature of the subject demands an eclectic range of researchers, both in terms of domain-expertise (e.g. decision sciences, social psychology, sociology) and technical skills (e.g. statistical analysis, mathematical modeling, computer simulations, design of web-based experiments).

For more information on HSD personnel and publications, see http://research.yahoo.com/Duncan_Watts

The successful candidate will contribute to the HSD group’s research agenda, and also work on applied problems of relevance to Yahoo consumer and advertising products.

Candidates must have completed (or be able to complete before starting) a PhD, preferably but not necessarily in CS/IS, statistics, or in quantitative social science.

Desired skills include but are not limited to:
* Mining web data
* Statistical analysis of large data sets
* Building 3rd party apps (Open Mail, Facebook)
* Designing, building, and running web-based “virtual lab” experiments
* Designing, building, and running web-based field experiments

Applications, including a CV and names/addresses of three referees, should be emailed to: Duncan Watts, [email protected]

Duncan is sooooo intense. He does great work, and he has some amazing people in his research group at Yahoo (or, as he would say, Yahoo!). You can’t go wrong with this one.