Alan Tsang

Assistant Professor

Honors Projects

I am currently open for a limited number of honors projects.

I do not have specific projects in mind.  Instead, it is important for me that your project be about something you are interested in or passionate about.  Ideally, it should answer a research question that you want to answer.  Give this some thought before contacting me -- as this will be the first question I ask of you anyways!

I am primarily interested in projects that explore how people make decisions in complex environments such as social networks. “People” is abstract, and could well also be robots / organizations / groups. More than that, how does the flow of information affect behaviors, and how does that information spread within networks?


A typical project may involve gathering and analyzing data from social media platforms (what do people think of Covid / who helps spread misinformation / etc), or constructing models on how behaviors evolve on them.

The pandemic has dramatically altered how we interact with each other. Opportunities abound for projects that gather, analyze, and model data about these unprecedented changes, so we may better understand these events as they unfold.

I've also blogged about two of my past research projects.  These should be accessible to a general CS audience:

Some interesting data that's different than what you'd usually work with:

https://www.preflib.org

If you have prior experience with data visualization or visualization libraries (especially D3), please let me know!  I have some ideas that we can explore on visualizing how social networks vary / evolve over time. This type of project will involve testing different data visualization frameworks or building your own, so familiarity with these tools is a prerequisite.

If these ideas spark an interest, or if you have other project ideas, drop me a line!

Undergraduate Research Assistantship

If you want a taste of research, and are interested in my fields of research, drop me a line about doing an URA!  I am accepting a small number of these students.  Let me know what aspects of research you interest you, and what types of projects pique your interest.

While I encourage qualifying first-year students to apply for the Dean's Summer Research Internships, I do not generally accept students under this program due to the specialist training required for my research (available as an upper-year COMP 4900 course).