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 innovation, and combines theories and methods from artificial intelligence, network science, data science, and social sciences. 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.

Email: yifan.qian1@kellogg.northwestern.edu

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Interests

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

Featured Publications

Visualizing the Broad Impact of Science and Science Funding with Funding the Frontier (Accepted in Principle) featured image

Nature Human Behaviour

Visualizing the Broad Impact of Science and Science Funding with Funding the Frontier (Accepted in Principle)

Sep 6, 2026 • 1 min read

The Rise of Large Language Models and the Direction and Impact of US Federal Research Funding featured image

PNAS

The Rise of Large Language Models and the Direction and Impact of US Federal Research Funding

Aug 11, 2026 • 1 min read

Figures as Interfaces: Toward LLM-Native Artifacts for Scientific Discovery featured image

arXiv

Figures as Interfaces: Toward LLM-Native Artifacts for Scientific Discovery

Apr 9, 2026 • 1 min read

SciSciGPT: Advancing Human-AI Collaboration in the Science of Science featured image

Nature Computational Science

SciSciGPT: Advancing Human-AI Collaboration in the Science of Science

Dec 9, 2025 • 1 min read

Tenure and Research Trajectories featured image

PNAS

Tenure and Research Trajectories

Jul 29, 2025 • 1 min read

InnovationInsights: A Visual Analytics Approach for Understanding the Dual Frontiers of Science and Technology featured image

TVCG

InnovationInsights: A Visual Analytics Approach for Understanding the Dual Frontiers of Science and Technology

Oct 25, 2023 • 1 min read

Geometric graphs from data to aid classification tasks with graph convolutional networks featured image

Patterns

Geometric graphs from data to aid classification tasks with graph convolutional networks

Apr 9, 2021 • 1 min read

Quantifying the alignment of graph and features in deep learning featured image

TNNLS

Quantifying the alignment of graph and features in deep learning

Jan 11, 2021 • 1 min read

Presentations

2026/10 — Keynote, The 3rd International Workshop on Artificial Intelligence for the Science of Science
2026/09 — Invited talk, NSF EDU AI Learning Community Distinguished Seminar Series
2026/08 — Invited talk, Columbia University, New York, NY
2026/07 — IC2S2, Burlington, VT
2026/07 — NBER Summer Institute, SciSci Funding, Cambridge, MA
2026/07 — ICSSI 2026, Boulder, Colorado
2026/06 — NetSci 2026, Boston, MA
2026/01 — NSF TIP APTO Meeting, virtual
2025/12 — NBER I3 Working Group Meeting, Cambridge, MA
2025/07 — NBER Summer Institute, SciSci Funding, Cambridge, MA
2024/07 — ICSSI 2024, National Academy of Sciences, Washington, DC
2023/06 — ICSSI 2023, Northwestern University
2022/07 — NetSci 2022, Shanghai, China
2022/06 — ICSSI 2022, National Academy of Sciences, Washington, DC
2021/07 — IC2S2 2021, ETH Zurich, Switzerland
2021/07 — NetSci 2021, Indiana University Network Science Institute
2020/09 — NetSci 2020, Rome, Italy
2020/07 — IC2S2 2020, MIT
2019/07 — IC2S2 2019, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
2019/03 — Data Natives 2019, City, University of London
2018/10 — 2nd UK Network Science Workshop, University of Greenwich
2018/07 — IC2S2 2018, Northwestern University

Conference abbreviations: NetSci (International School and Conference on Network Science); IC2S2 (International Conference on Computational Social Science); ICSSI (International Conference on the Science of Science and Innovation); NBER (National Bureau of Economic Research); I3 (Innovation Information Initiative).