Honglin (虹霖) Bao
Innovation, Complex Systems, and AI for Social Science
Contact: hbao at hbs dot edu or baohlcs at gmail dot com
Digital, Data, and Design Institute -- my official D^3@Harvard page
#I stand for open science
Hi there! I am Honglin (he/him), a computational social science research associate in D^3/Harvard Business School working with Drs. Anjali Bhatt and Amit Goldenberg. I also collaborate on papers with Dr. Misha Teplitskiy (UMichigan School of Information) and NC State Network Analysis Group.
I study the sociological processes of innovation — how new ideas and practices are born and spread, how social, scientific, and technological institutions influence collective cognition, evaluation, and discovery, and how innovation and broader societal issues like inequality and policy impact each other reciprocally.
I use and develop computational/quantitative methods: network analysis, NLP, machine/deep learning, causal inference/econometrics, and agent-based modeling.
Broadly, I am interested in the general theory behind the emergent information within complex systems from social organizations, to human understanding, to large language models, to cities, and how the social methodological paradigms learn from complex systems and AI.
My papers appear in top peer-reviewed journals and proceedings across computer science, statistical physics/network science, and social sciences including Nature Communications.
I have training in mathematics, computer science, social science, and evolutionary biology and I draw insights from multidisciplinary theories to enrich my research. Before coming to HBS I graduated from Michigan State where I researched multi-agent reinforcement learning in games. I am from Northeastern China where I volunteered for LGBTQ health for years. I am a big fan of sports, especially squat bench deadlift and lifting my heaviest.