Welcome to Tom Wolff, PhD, Research Assistant Professor

By: Julie A. Bednark

We are delighted to welcome Thomas Wolff, PhD, who joins the faculty of Northwestern University Department of Medical Social Sciences (MSS) as a Research Assistant Professor in the Division of Determinants of Health.

Tom holds a PhD in Sociology from Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. He was previously a Postdoctoral Scholar in the CONNECT Complex Systems and Health Disparities Research Program at the Institute for Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing.

Recent advances in social network analysis have made it possible to use information about individuals’ personal networks to simulate and make inferences about broader social structures. Tom is especially interested in how to better implement these advances in the study of public health. His current work with CONNECT applies social network analysis, agent-based modeling, and other computational methods to identify sources of inequities in HIV risk among young men who have sex with men and transgender women (YMSM-TW). Collaborating with Michelle Birkett, PhD, and Patrick Janulis, PhD, he has specifically examined how HIV risk for YMSM may be differentially informed by substance use and the kinds of physical and virtual spaces in which they socialize and begin sexual partnerships.

Outside of CONNECT, Tom has come to occupy a central role in the IDEANet project, a National Science Foundation-funded effort aimed at improving the security, accessibility, reproducibility, and adaptability of network data. Tom’s contributions to this project include much of the open-source ideanet R package, which provides easy-to-use network analysis tools for students, entry-level users, and non-expert practitioners. While this package is being finalized for formal release, it has already built a committed user base in both research and pedagogical settings. As the number of users continues to grow, Tom hopes the package will facilitate significant contributions to research using network methods and change how we teach these methods to future generations of scholars.

Tom is excited to further embed himself within MSS and build even more working relationships. In his time developing tools for network analysis, he has found that his best innovations come after meeting scholars who approach data in ways that differ from his closest colleagues.

We look forward to the contributions Tom will make in advancing equity, innovation, and impact in health, both through his research and as a valued member of our community. Welcome Tom!