Yifan Qian

Research Assistant Professor in Science of Science and Innovation

Professional Summary

I am currently a Research Assistant Professor at the CSSI, Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, United States. My research is broadly concerned with the science of science, and combines theories and methods from network science, machine learning, data science, and sociology. The general goal of my work is to measure and predict innovations in research institutions with large-scale data sets on scientific fundings, publications and their broad impacts on various facets of human society.

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Education

PhD in business and management

Queen Mary University of London, United Kingdom

MSc in computer science

Beihang University, China

BSc in information and computing science

Beihang University, China

Interests

Science of science Innovation Computational social science Network science Machine learning Data science

Featured Publications

Tenure and Research Trajectories

Giorgio Tripodi

• Jul 29, 2025 • 1 min read

Citation regression analysis of computer science publications in different ranking categories and subfields

Yifan Qian

• Mar 1, 2017 • 1 min read

Recent Publications

Erzhuo Shao, Yifang Wang, Yifan Qian, Zhenyu Pan, Han Liu, Dashun Wang (2025). SciSciGPT: Advancing Human-AI Collaboration in the Science of Science.

URL DOI

Yifang Wang, Yifan Qian, Xiaoyu Qi, Yian Yin, Shengqi Dang, Ziqing Qian, Benjamin F. Jones, Nan Cao, Dashun Wang (2025). Funding the Frontier: Visualizing the Broad Impact of Science and Science Funding.

Giorgio Tripodi

Equal contribution

, Xiang Zheng

Equal contribution

, Yifan Qian

Equal contribution

, Dakota Murray, Benjamin F. Jones, Chaoqun Ni, Dashun Wang (2025). Tenure and Research Trajectories. PNAS.

PDF Source Document DOI

Yifang Wang, Yifan Qian, Xiaoyu Qi, Nan Cao, Dashun Wang (2024). InnovationInsights: A Visual Analytics Approach for Understanding the Dual Frontiers of Science and Technology.

URL DOI

Yifan Qian (2021). Network science, big data analytics, and deep learning: An interdisciplinary approach to the study of citation, social and collaboration networks.

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