San Gabriel Valley UCLA Fund Chancellor’s Society Regional Event

Reading Between the Tweets: Using Social Data to Predict and Change Real World Problems

Social big data from technologies like social media, online search, and mobile apps are being used to better understand and predict real-world events and outcomes. The University of California Institute for Prediction Technology (UCIPT) at UCLA was created to address issues like these. As Executive Director of UCLA Center for Digital Behavior and Executive Director of the UCIPT, Dr. Young works to bring together researchers and community stakeholders to study whether and how social technology data can be used to predict events in areas like health, politics, and security. Dr. Young’s talk will provide an overview of the field of Prediction Technology as well as research being addressed by the Institute, such as 1) how Twitter is being used to predict HIV risk behaviors and outbreaks, 2) how social media and wearable devices can be used to predict sleep quality and stress among UCLA students, and 3) ways in which these insights are being used to change people’s behaviors to address real-world problems.

About Dr. Sean Young

Sean Young, PhD, MS is the Director of the University of California Institute for Prediction Technology (UCIPT), the UCLA Center for Digital Behavior, and an Assistant Professor of Family Medicine. As the Director of UCIPT, Dr. Young seeks to bridge researchers across University of California campuses to study how data from social technologies like social media and wearable devices can be used to predict real-world events in areas like health/medicine, politics, and security. His research at the UCLA Center for Digital Behavior is focused on use of social media and mobile health technologies to change and predict behavior. He has studied how social media can address issues related to HIV and drug use prevention and treatment behavior in the U.S., Peru, and South Africa, and Iran, and among various at-risk populations around the world. He was the Primary Investigator of the Harnessing Online Peer Education (HOPE) UCLA, HOPE Peru, and HOPE Opioid studies, showing how social media can be used to increase HIV testing and reduce prescription drug abuse/addiction. His team completed the first study to create methods of using observational big data (> 550 million tweets) from social media for drug and HIV-related surveillance. He teaches a course for UCLA undergraduates called Hacking Global Health on how to use social media and mobile technologies to quickly address global health needs.

RSVP is required for this event.
Invitees can RSVP at: https://eventsrsvp.ucla.edu/SGV/