Shazia’Ayn was awarded the Copper Street Capital LLP Scholarship 2024-2025.
Shazia’Ayn is entering the final year of her DPhil at the University of Oxford, where she is studying network science and complex systems at the Mathematical Institute. Shazia’Ayn was born in Victoria, and grew up in Vancouver, where she first discovered her passion for mathematics due to her very devoted mathematics teachers. She completed her BA at Princeton University in New Jersey, where she broadened her horizons, and learned about the possibilities of applying mathematics to questions from social science.
Her current doctoral research focuses on network science, a branch of mathematics that studies the patterns of connections between a set of connected objects, called nodes, which are joined by edges, representing interactions. The research involves developing novel algorithms to understand the behaviours of networked systems, inspired by real-world social networks. Currently, she is investigating algorithms for understanding signed networks. Signed networks, where nodes represent individuals, and positive (negative) edges represent friendly (hostile) interactions, are powerful representations of human society. These networks can be constructed from social media data, where users have arguments or agreements, usually of a political nature, with each other on the platform. The research addresses questions such as: how politically polarized is the social media platform? How can we predict the users’s political ideology from the network structure? How do changing conversation topics and news stories influence the network evolution over time?
Her research at Oxford has a strong inter-disciplinary nature, combining methodological tools from different disciplines, with a range of data-driven applications. Using a combination of data mining, mathematical modelling and numerical simulations, the work will be tested and inspired by real-world datasets. The interdisciplinary nature of the research allows for applications to areas of national importance to Canada, with impacts as far reaching our political system. For example, the methodology developed could be used to understand the dynamics of political polarization in online social networks, allowing us to investigate the role of social media on our democratic system. These findings also have the potential to create safer online platforms.
Shazia’Ayn is incredibly excited to continue her work this year as a CCSF scholar. Following the completion of her DPhil, she hopes to return home to pursue a career in academia and join the world-leading Canadian mathematical sciences community.
