How would you describe your work in 90 seconds?

My work is about algorithms, networks, and their impact on society. Nowadays, the standard example for networks are online social networks, like Facebook and Instagram, but there are also offline social networks, for example when we talk to our friends or families. It’s important to understand these networks both in terms of what’s going on within them and how they influence our behaviors, relationships, and societal structures. A question that I’m very interested in is to find communities inside these networks. Besides that, I also want to find out how people form their opinions on online social networks, especially how this opinion-formation process is influenced by something like a timeline algorithm, for example, on Twitter or Facebook. I work on questions such as: When you see new posts on social media, how does this shape your opinion? How much is this impacted by algorithmic curation? What are the higher-order interactions there? My research group is trying to understand the underlying phenomena and we also develop algorithms that mitigate the harmful events that we detect.

How did you get in touch with informatics?

That’s a really long story (laughs). In the ‘90s, my mother worked in a typing pool. Back then, not everyone had a computer, so she would professionally type down documents on a computer for people who didn’t have a computer of their own. I spent a lot of time in her office, so I was always close to computers. I already had my own computer when I was about 10 years old, and of course, I used to play a lot of video games on that computer. But at some point, I wanted to get a new computer, and I had to make a choice: Get a computer to play video games or get a Mac. Back then, I was really frustrated with Windows, so I decided to get the Mac. But then I realized that I couldn’t play video games on the Mac, so I had to do something else. That’s when I started programming. I started taking up some programming jobs when I was still in high school, but at some point, I was fed up with programming. So, I studied mathematics. And then I learned about theoretical computer science, which was a lot of fun because it combined computer science and mathematics and that just made me very happy. Later I also learned about data science, and now I work on the theory and practice of data science.

Where do you see the connection between your research and everyday life?

Every day we are dealing with networks, especially with online social networks. There are still a lot of open questions regarding online social networks, for example about the algorithms that are deployed there. We don’t really understand their impact on our society and what we should do to make sure that they do not create harm. With my research, I want to contribute to building the foundations to regulate these algorithms in the future. Right now, (likely) nobody is using an algorithm from my research, but I hope that will change.

What makes you happy in your work?

I think it’s the curiosity, my own and that of other people. It’s so delightful to work with other curious people, whether it be more senior ones or students. It’s a lot of fun to just talk to them, to share ideas, and to collaborate on projects. I also enjoy just thinking about computer science and mathematical problems, locking myself up in my room for a couple of hours, and thinking very deeply about how something works. Recently, I also started to enjoy teaching. When I was a PhD student, I also had some teaching responsibilities, but there wasn’t much wiggle room in how to do it. But now, when I teach my own courses, I have more freedom. I also feel the responsibility of teaching the students something that makes them happy and prepares them for their careers. I want to live up to this responsibility.

Why do you think there are still so few women in computer science?

I think that’s a very difficult question to answer, because it’s a question that’s also tied to history. There are some studies showing that in the early days of computer science, the fraction of women in the field was higher than today, but it declined at some point. I think part of the reason why is that sometimes, we have this stereotypical picture of computer nerds trying to solve puzzles the entire day and being a little bit toxic. However, computer science is so much more than that, and we have to show that to people. In the fall, I’ll start co-teaching a course for first semesters, and I want to make a point in one of the first lectures that the course is more theory-oriented, but computer science also has many more applied parts, like human-computer interaction or connections to linguistics and biology, and that there is room for everyone. I want to point out that there are different kinds of computer scientists and that this is great—we need all of them. By highlighting the diversity within the field, I hope we can also increase the diversity of the people who work in computer science.

Stefan Neumann is Assistant Professor at the Research Unit Machine Learning at TU Wien Informatics. His current project, Towards Trustworthy Recommendation Systems for Online Social Networks, investigates the impact of recommender systems in social networks before they are deployed. The project is funded by a WWTF VRC grant and will run until 2030.

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