Stefano Balietti

Stefano Balietti Follow @balietti

I get up every morning determined to both change the world and have one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning my day difficult. (E.B. White)

Short Summary

I am a postdoc researcher at Microsoft Research Computational Social Science. Previously, I was a postdoc at the Northeastern Network Science Institute and a fellow at the Harvard Institute for Quantitative Social Science. My methodology of investigation brings together computer simulations, laboratory and online behavioral experiments. I create virtual environments to study human behavior in large groups; I use bots to trigger specific conditions, and artificial intelligence to determine optimal experimental designs (Bayesian methods and advanced machine learning).

My research interests encompass:

incentives schemes for collective intelligence, in particular peer review systems;

optimal experimental designs, Bayesian optimization with Gaussian processes;

inequality, perception thereof and its consequences;

noise, efficiency and equality in coordination and public-good games;

consensus formation and social influence, in particular in epistemic communities;

philosophy of science, in particular Paul Feyerabend's body of work.

I am also an active open source developer. I created a JavaScript platform for conducting real-time online group-behavior experiments called nodeGame (http://nodegame.org). Previously, I have been project leader of the QScience platform for the QLectives project (http://qlectives.eu).

For further information check my Bio or download my CV as pdf.

Publications

2018: "Adding noise to the Institution: An Experimental Welfare Investigation of the Contribution-Based Grouping Mechanism" H.H. Nax, S. Balietti, R.O. Murphy, and D. Helbing Social Choice and Welfare Volume 50, Issue 2, pp. 213-245 [Link]
2017: "How Do Individuals Share the Costs of Climate Change Mitigation? Evidence from an Online Game Experiment" B. Anderson, T. Bernauer, and S. Balietti Climatic Change Volume 142, Issue 3-4, pp. 447-461 [Link]; "nodeGame: Real-Time, Synchronous, Online Experiments in the Browser" Behavior Research Methods Volume 49, Issue 5, pp. 1696-1715 [Link 1] [Link 2]
2016: "Peer Review and Competition in the Art Exhibition Game" S. Balietti, R.L. Goldstone, and D. Helbing, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) Volume 113, Number 30 (2016) 8414-8419 [Link]
2015: "On Disciplinary Fragmentation and Scientific Progress" S. Balietti, M. Mäs, D. Helbing PLoS ONE 10(3): e0118747. [Link]
2012: "Agent-Based Modeling" D. Helbing, S. Balietti book chapter in 'Social Self-Organization'. Series: Understanding Complex Systems. Helbing, Dirk (Ed.) Springer, (2012) 25-70 [Link] [Link]
2011: "Understanding, Creating, and Managing Complex Techno-Socio-Economic Systems: Challenges and Perspectives" D. Helbing, S. Balietti, S. Bishop and P. Lukowicz The European Physical Journal - Special Topics. Volume 195, Number 1 (2011), 165-186 [Link]; "From Social Data Mining to Forecasting Socio-Economic Crises" D. Helbing and S. Balietti The European Physical Journal - Special Topics. Volume 195, Number 1 (2011), 3-68 [Link]; "From Social Simulation to Integrative System Design" D. Helbing and S. Balietti The European Physical Journal - Special Topics. Volume 195, Number 1 (2011), 69-100 [Link]; "How to Create an Innovation Accelerator" D. Helbing and S. Balietti The European Physical Journal - Special Topics. Volume 195, Number 1 (2011), 101-136 [Link]
2010: "Fundamental and Real-World Challenges in Economics". D. Helbing and S. Balietti Science and Culture 76(9-10), 399-417 [Link]

Working Papers

Egalitarian vs Meritocratic Creative Production Markets: A Systemic Comparison of Innovation, Fairness, Allocative Efficiency, Inequality and Participation
Domain Expertise or Algorithmic Insight? Optimal Bayesian Experimental Design for Digital Experiments
Tournaments for Collective Intelligence: a Survey of the Literature
Efficiency Gains in Coordination in Information Poor Environments [Link]
Paul Feyerabend's Peer Review

Book Reviews

Models of Science Dynamics: Encounters Between Complexity Theory and Information Sciences (Understanding Complex Systems) Scharnhorst, Andrea, Boerner, Katy and Besselaar, Peter van den (eds.) Springer-Verlag: Berlin, 2012 [Link]

Conferences

"The Market Structure for Innovation" International Conference on Computational Social Science IC2S2, Evanston, IL, 12th - 15th Jul, 2018
"Domain Expertise or Algorithmic Insight? Fast Optimization of Information Gain in Experimental Design" World Meeting Economic Science Association Conference ESA18, Berlin, Germany, 28th Jun - 1st Jul, 2018
"Toward the Optimal Design of Social Network Experiments" CompleNet, Boston, MA, 5th - 8th Mar, 2018
"The Market Structure of Innovation" CompleNet, Boston, MA, 5th - 8th Mar, 2018
"Mood, High Stakes and Dropouts in an Online Innovation Tournament" Code @ MIT 2017, Cambridge, MA, 27th - 28st Oct, 2017
"Optimal Design for Online Social Experimentation" Code @ MIT 2017, Cambridge, MA, 27th - 28st Oct, 2017
"nodeGame 4.0: Online Real-Time Synchronous Experiments" (poster) Code @ MIT 2017, Cambridge, MA, 27th - 28st Oct, 2017
"The Market Structure for Innovation" North American Economic Science Association Conference ESA17, Richmond, VA, 19th - 21st Oct, 2017
"Adding Noise to the Institution: An Experimental Welfare Investigation of the Contribution-Based Grouping Mechanism" North American Economic Science Association Conference ESA17, Richmond, VA, 19th - 21st Oct, 2017
"Efficiency Gains in Coordination in Information Poor Environments" North American Economic Science Association Conference ESA17, Richmond, VA, 19th - 21st Oct, 2017
"The Market Structures for Innovation" International Conference on Social Informatics SocInfo-2016, Bellevue, WA, 15th - 17th Nov, 2016 (Best Lightening Talk Award!)
"The Market Structures for Creativity" North American Economic Science Association Conference ESA16, Tucson, AZ, Nov 10th - 12th, 2016
"The Market Structures for Innovation" Code @ MIT 2016, Cambridge, MA, Oct 14th - 15th, 2016
"Efficiency Gains in Coordination in Information Poor Environments" Workshop on the Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents (WEHIA) 2016, Castellón de la Plana, Spain, 22nd - 24th Jun, 2016
"Competition Promotes Diversity and Innovation, but Undermines Fair Peer Review" International Conference on Computational Social Science IC2S2 Helsinki, Jun 8th - 11th, 2015
"Dissolving the efficiency-equality tradeoff in public-goods games" Social Norms and Institutions SNI2015 Monte Veritá Ascona, May 10th - 15th, 2015
"nodeGame: a tool for real-time on-line behavioral experiments" General Online Research GOR15 Cologne, Mar 18th - 20th, 2015
"On Fragmentation and Scientific Progress" European Conference on Complex Systems ECCS-2014 Lucca, Sep 22st - 26th, 2014
"On Fragmentation and Scientific Progress" Social Simulation Conference SSC-2014 Barcelona, Sep 1st - 5th, 2014
"The Art Exhibition Game" 15th International Conference on Social Dilemmas Zurich, Jul 10th - 13th, 2013
"A Model of Adaptive Convergence in Science" Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft DPG-2013 Regensburg, Mar 11th - 15th, 2013
"nodeGame: Social Experiments in the Browser" (poster) New Developments in Signaling and Game Theory, Oct 14th - 19th, 2012
"Online Social Experiments with Nodegame" (tutorial presentation) SocInfo 2012, Dec 05th - 07th, 2012

Workshops

"Financial Inclusion Workshop" Innovation for Poverty Action, Yale University, New Haven, CT, 14 May 2016
"Innovations in Online Experiments" University of Oxford, Nuffield Center for Experimental Social Sciences, Oxford (UK), 13 Mar 2015
"Multi-Agent Simulation (MAS) and Global Issues" University of Tokyo, Komaba Campus I, Tokyo (JP), 19 Feb 2015
Lorentz workshop "Simulating the Social Processes of Science" Leiden (NL), 7-11 Apr 2014

Reviewer for

Journals:: EPJ Data Science; Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation (JASSS); Frontiers in Psychology, section Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology; Evolutionary and Institutional Economics Review; International Studies in the Philosophy of Science; Games; Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination; Journal of Computational Science; Royal Society Open Science; PLoS ONE; Information and Software Technology; Data Science; Journal of Imaging
Conferences:: PRIMA 2018; International Conference on Information Systems 2018; CompleNet 2018; Social Simulation Conference 2018; Social Simulation Conference 2017; Social Simulation Conference 2016; Social Simulation Conference 2015; Social Simulation Conference 2014; World Congress Social Simulation 2014; ESSA 2013; ICACI 2012

Awards

Special mention in the "Exeter Prize for Research in Experimental Economics, Decision Theory and Behavioral Economics 2017," paper "Peer Review and Competition in the Art Exhibition Game"
Best Lightening Talk Award "The Market Structure For Innovation" SocInfo 2016

European Projects

VISIONEER: Envisioning a socio-economic knowledge collider http://www.visioneer.ethz.ch
QLectives: Quality Colletives http://www.qlectives.eu
FuturICT: Participatory Computing for Our Complex World http://www.futurict.eu
COST Action PEERE: New Frontieers of Peer Review http://www.peere.org

Invited Presentations

"Peer Review, Competition and Market Structure" Harvard Political Psychology Graduate Panel, Cambridge (MA) 2017-10-06
"Imitation and innovation in networked groups, and a new experimental framework for collective behavior experiments" Percepts and Concepts Laboratory Colloquium (IU), Bloomington (IN) 2012-10-05
"Scholarly peer-review process (pros and cons) and possible alternatives for the selection of quality in Science" International MSc and PhD Programs in Complexity Sciences ISCTE Seminar, Lisbon 2010-10-30
"HTML5 nice to meet you" QLectives winter workshop on web technologies, Fribourg 2010-10-19

Teaching

Tutorial on 'Synchronous Online Experiments,' Computational Social Science Symposium, Cologne, Germany 5 Dec 2018 (forthcoming)
Tutorial on 'Science Meets Industry: Online Behavioral Experiments with nodeGame,' Node.js Interactive North American, Austin, TX, USA 29 Nov 2016
Tutorial on 'Programming Synchronic Online Experiments using NodeGame,' CESS Nuffiled College Oxford, UK 16-17 Nov 2015
Graduate block course 'Modeling and Simulating Social Systems with MATLAB (and other tools),' ETH SEC Center, Singapore, 19 - 23 Oct 2015
Semester class 'Modeling and Simulating Social Systems with MATLAB,' ETH Zurich, 2015 Fall Semester
Tutorial on 'Online Experiments with nodeGame,' SocInfo 2012 EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland 5 Dec 2012
Semester class 'Modeling and Simulating Social Systems with MATLAB,' ETH Zurich, Switzerland, 2010-2012 (5 Semesters)

Software Development

nodeGame http://www.nodegame.org
NDDB.JS - Javascript N-Dimensional Database http://nodegame.github.io/NDDB
JSUS - Javascript Utils (JSUS Helps!) http://nodegame.github.io/JSUS
QScience http://www.github.com/QScience
Patterns http://drupal.org/project/patterns
msssm - Modeling and Simulating Social Systems with MATLAB http://www.github.com/msssm

Bibtex References

All my bibtex files are available for download at the github socialbib repository.

Public Writings

"Here's how competition makes peer review more unfair," The Conversation, New Republic Aug. 8 2016

Art Projects

"Faces of change." Ten Percent White, Warsaw Center for Contemporary Art December 18, 2012 - February 10, 2013

Media Coverage

Online Behavioral Experiments Happening With nodeGame and Node.js, Linux.com Blog. (Nov 14, 2016)
Peer review system 'leads to good research going unpublished', Times Higher Education. (July 26, 2016)
Can we trust peer review? New study highlights some problems, Ars Technica. (July 20, 2016)
Wikileaks wirft ethische Grundfragen auf, News.ch. (Dec 6, 2010)
Quando l'economia incontra la fisica, Il Blog di Caccia al Fotone. (Jan 7, 2011)
Geheimhaltung ist fuer das Wohl einer Gesellschaft entscheidend, Tages Anzeiger. (Dec 12, 2010)
The 70 Online Databases that Define Our Planet, MIT Technology Review. (Dec 3, 2010)