Dr. Anatoliy Gruzd is Director of the Social Media Lab at Dalhousie University and an Assistant Professor in the School of Information Management at the Faculty of Management and the Faculty of Computer Science where he teaches Information Policy, Information Management Systems, Digital Libraries, Data Mining, User Experience, and Beyond Google.

His ongoing research initiatives explores how social media and other Web 2.0 technologies are changing the ways in which people disseminate knowledge and information and how these changes are impacting social, economic and political norms and structures of our modern society. In addition, he is also actively developing and testing new web tools and apps for discovering and visualizing information and online social networks. The broad aim of his various research initiatives is to provide decision makers with additional knowledge and insights into the behaviors and relationships of online network members, and to understand how these interpersonal connections influence our personal choices and actions.

Dr. Gruzd’s research focus includes: Social Media Usage, Social Networks Analysis, Online Social Networks, Online Communities, Information Visualization, Text Mining, Context-aware Information Retrieval, and Computer-Mediated Communication.

Research Funding

Dr. Gruzd’s research initiatives are funded by grants from:

Research Awards and Honors

Dr. Gruzd’s work has appeared in numerous high impact, peer-reviewed journals including Information Processing & Management (IP&M), Social Networks, American Behavioral Scientist, Journal of the Medical Library Association(JMLA), Journal of Education for Library and Information Science (JELIS) and at a wide variety of respected and influential conferences including the Hawaiian International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS), the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T), International Network for Social Network Analysis (INSNA), Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE), Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL), GROUP, and Networked Learning.

His research and commentaries have also been reported in various national and international mass media outlets such as The Associated Press, the Atlantic Cities, The Globe and Mail, CBC TV, CBC Radio, The Canadian Press, Postmedia News, CTV News and Global News.

In early 2010, Dr. Gruzd (as PI) and Dr. Wellman (as co-PI) from the University of Toronto’s Department of Sociology was awarded $161,000 by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada to study “How Social Media and Online Social Networks are Changing the Ways Scholars Disseminate Knowledge and Information”. Concurrently, Dr. Gruzd is also a Collaborative Network Investigator in a $23.2 million Networks of Centres of Excellence (NCE) initiative called GRAND (Graphics, Animation and New meDia) which is a consortium of researchers from across Canada who share a common goal to help develop and enhance Canada’s position as a global leader in new media, animation and games. (See Media Coverage/Press Releases for a complete list of grants)

In 2010, Dalhousie University Faculty of Management awarded Dr. Gruzd with its annual Award for Exceptional Interdisciplinary Endeavour in Scholarly Research.

In 2009, the Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE) awarded Dr. Gruzd with the ALISE 2009 Best Paper Award for a paper entitled “Studying collaborative learning using name networks”. Subsequently this paper was published in the Journal of Education for Library and Information Science.

As an emerging expert in the fields of online social networks, social media, social networks analysis and information visualization, Dr. Gruzd has also been sought out as a consultant and guest speaker by universities in North America and Europe such as the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), Syracuse University, Politecnico di Milano in Italy, the University of Western Ontario (UWO), and Canadian organizations such as MITACS, GRAND, Research Canada, Council of Nova Scotia Archives (CNSA), Nova Scotia Chapter of ARMA, and the Nova Scotia Community Access Program (CAP).

Education

Dr. Gruzd earned his PhD in Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2009, his MS in Library & Information Science from Syracuse University in 2005 and a BS & MS in Computer Science from Dnipropetrovsk National University in Ukraine in 2002.