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Negenborn. “The number of journals and channels through which publications are presented is only increasing. It is becoming increasingly difficult for researchers to maintain an overview of their field.” Those who can no longer see the forest for the trees can turn to Aida. Researchers involved in the project, including Ranjbar-Sahraei, and colleagues from Leiden’s CWTS and TU Delft Library, help you explore your field of research. “We help them use automatic big data analysis tools to map out which researchers and research groups in the Netherlands and abroad are active in their field and what the trends are,” said Ranjbar-Sahraei. “Who might you be able to work with? Also, are there groups you had wanted to cooperate with which have been associating themselves with other topics in recent years? The analyses can produce those types of insights, too. These are useful enquiries in preparation for attending conferences: you can
network more effectively. It’s useful for writing grant applications, too.” Back to the faculties. As yet, interpreting the images is tricky. “We are in the early stage of exploration. Consequently, it’s important that we interpret the visualisations with researchers from various disciplines who can identify the keywords.” Ranjbar-Sahraei wants to zoom in closer on the faculties and go over the resulting images later this year with the TU Delft deans. “The study can indicate opportunities for better cooperation between research groups and departments that faculties are currently ignoring.” 3mE dean Theun Baller is already excited about the initiative that emerged in his faculty. “Data mining and the use of big data the way it is being done in this project is important. These tools can definitely further enhance our research.” << Aida will organise a workshop in the spring. More information: aida.tudelft.nl. Read more at delta.tudelft.nl
Data analyst Bijan Ranjbar-Sahraei (1966) has been working on the Aida project at TU Delft since last year. Before that he did his PhD research at University of Maastricht. In 2016 he defended his thesis ‘Mining and Modeling of Dynamic Social Graphs’. In 2011 he graduated as a master student in control engineering at Shiraz University in Iran. His graduation research concerned controlling robotic swarms.