About

Hao is an assistant professor in the Department of Data Science at City University of Hong Kong. He is interested in computational social science, social networks, and science of innovation. He examines social factors involved in the production and dissemination of creative ideas. Dr. Peng's research aims to generate deep insights that can help organizations leverage the full potential of human capital to drive innovation, growth, and well-being. His research has been published in top journals such as PNAS, Science Advances, and was reported by international media outlets including The Washington Post, Le Monde, NPR, and New Scientist. His scholarship has won top awards from The Complex Systems Society, The Network Science Society, The SciPy Conference, and The Annual Meeting of ASIS&T. Dr. Peng was a Postdoc in the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, after obtaining his Ph.D in Information Science from University of Michigan in 2022 and a B.S in Information Management from Sun Yat-sen University in 2015.

Updates

• 09/2024:   Super excited to receive the Emerging Award from the Complex Systems Society 2024!
• 05/2024:   I will present our forthcoming PNAS paper on promotional language in funding at NBER this summer.
• 04/2024:   I will join the Department of Data Science at City University of Hong Kong as an Assistant Professor this July!
• 03/2024:   Check out my interview with Science Magazine about our paper on ethnic disparities in science news reporting.
• 01/2024:   Excited about my WED@NICO talk on why and how to facilitate idea adoption in science.
• 01/2024:   New paper studying author names and how often they are (un)mentioned in science news published in QSS.
• 09/2022:   New paper studying novelty and acceptance published in PNAS.
• 04/2022:   New paper studying retracted papers and their misinformation published in PNAS.
• 10/2021:   Our team won the best paper award of SIG/MET at ASIS&T 2021!
• 02/2021:   New paper accepted by Science Advances. Check out this interactive map of innovation landscape.
• 11/2020:   New paper studying the speed of information diffusion accepted by PRE.
• 09/2020:  New Scientist wrote a story about our paper on ethnic bias in author mentions in science reporting.
• 09/2019:   Our Echo Demo won the 2nd Prize in the John Hunter Excellence in Plotting Contest at SciPy 2019!

Representative Publications

• The Gender Gap in Scholarly Self-Promotion on Social Media
  Hao Peng, Misha Teplitskiy, Daniel M. Romero, Emőke-Ágnes Horvát
  Nature Communications 16, 5552 (2025) Link
• Promotional Language and the Adoption of Innovative Ideas in Science
  Hao Peng, Huilian Sophie Qiu, Henrik Barslund Fosse, Brian Uzzi
  PNAS 121, e2320066121 (2024) Link | Code
  Press: Kellogg Insight | Science News
• Author Mentions in Science News Reveal Widespread Disparities Across Name-inferred Ethnicities
  Hao Peng, Misha Teplitskiy, David Jurgens
  Quantitative Science Studies 1-23 (2024) Link |
  Press: The Conversation | Science Magazine | New Scientist | LSE Impact Blog | Fast Company | NPR
• Is Novel Research Worth Doing? Evidence From Peer Review at 49 Journals
  Misha Teplitskiy, Hao Peng, Andrea Blasco, Karim R. Lakhani
  PNAS 119, e2118046119 (2022) Link |
  
• Dynamics of Cross-Platform Attention to Retracted Papers
  Hao Peng, Daniel M. Romero, Emőke-Ágnes Horvát
  PNAS 119, e2119086119 (2022) Link |
  Press: Washington Post | Le Monde | Deutschlandfunk | Northwestern Now | Inside Higher ED | Retraction Watch
• Neural Embeddings of Scholarly Periodicals Reveal Complex Disciplinary Organizations
  Hao Peng, Qing Ke, Ceren Budak, Daniel M. Romero, Yong-Yeol Ahn
  Science Advances 7, eabb9004 (2021) Link | Map
  
• Network Modularity Controls the Speed of Information Diffusion
  Hao Peng, Azadeh Nematzadeh, Daniel M. Romero, Emilio Ferrara
  Physical Review E 102, 052316 (2020) Link
  
• Social Influence and Unfollowing Accelerate the Emergence of Echo Chambers
  Kazutoshi Sasahara, Wen Chen, Hao Peng, Giovanni Luca Ciampaglia, Alessandro Flammini, Filippo Menczer
  Journal of Computational Social Science (2020) Link | Demo |
  Press: Scientific American | The Conversation

Teaching

• SDSC5002 - Exploratory Data Analysis and Visualization (Semester A, 24/25)
• SDSC3013 - Introduction to Social Media Analytics (Semester A, 25/26)
• SDSC2005 - Introduction to Computational Social Science (Semester B, 25/26)

Mentoring

I'm looking for highly motivated Ph.D students and Postdocs to join my research group. Interested candicates can send me an email with your CV, research experience, past accomplishments, and a brief description of research ideas you want to pursue. Students with a strong background are encouraged to apply for the HK PhD Fellowship Scheme and the RGC Junior Research Fellow Scheme. Please note that I may not reply due to the large volume of emails received and only shortlisted candidate will be contacted. Thanks for your understanding.

Research Team

I direct the Human Intelligence and Innovation Science (HIIS) Lab, where I have the privilege to work with these great students:

At CityU:

• Wenwen LI (PhD, 2025 - present; BS from NYU; MS from Columbia University)
• Lijian PENG (MS, 2024 - present; BS from CityUHK)

Visiting Scholars:

• Tongyang ZHANG (PhD from SYSU)
• Mingze ZHANG (BS from Sichuan University; MS from University of CAS)
• Jiayi SHEN (BS from USTC)
• Ruoxi WANG (BS from CUFE)

Fun

On my free time, I enjoy workout and travel. I shoot street and portrait photography. I love many kinds of authentic food.