News Release

Carnegie Mellon professor Kathleen Carley receives American Sociological Association Award for computing work

Grant and Award Announcement

Carnegie Mellon University

PITTSBURGH-Kathleen M. Carley, a professor of Social and Decision Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University and director of the university's Center for Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems (CASOS), is the recipient of the American Sociological Association, Sociology and Computers Section's Lifetime Achievement Award.

The ASA award committee said that Carley's work "has exemplified the use of computers to enhance our understanding of social life."

Carley has held leadership positions in both the Sociology and Computers Section and the Mathematical Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association. The award committee added that her co-edited volumes on computational models of organizations have helped to "define" the field.

Carley's work links theories and methods from social networks, organization science, social science, biology and computer science to formulate computer science models that analyze complex social and organizational problems and policies. She and her co-researchers have created computer-based analytic tools and mathematical or logical models for choosing workgroup members, predicting organization responses to disasters and terrorist activities, outlining the network structure in virtual organizations and depicting organizational adaptations in volatile and hostile environments.

Carley says that her investigations into organization networks help to reveal "who knows who and who knows what" within organizations, critical intelligence necessary in order to understand the ability of an organization to operate and adapt to changing social, political, technological and economic conditions.

Her research and teaching appointments at Carnegie Mellon include Social and Decision Sciences, Engineering and Public Policy, the H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management, and the Institute for Complex Engineered Systems. She has been a member of the Carnegie Mellon faculty since 1984 and director of CASOS since 1988.

Active research grant sponsors for Carley's work include the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), U.S. Army Research Labs, U.S. Office of Naval Research, National Science Foundation and Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. In the past 15 years, she has consulted to more than 10 large corporations and universities and gives frequent invited lectures and conference presentations worldwide. She has authored or co-authored four books, more than 85 journal articles and numerous chapters in edited texts and many conference proceedings. She serves on the editorial board of five major journals in sociological and cognitive sciences and is a reviewer for many others.

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Carley received her bachelor of science degree in political science and economics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a doctor's degree in sociology from Harvard University.


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