“The Network Intelligence and Coordiantion Lab (NICL)”
ABOUT MY WORK
Dr. Shahar Somin is an Assistant Professor at the faculty of engineering, Bar Ilan university and the head of the Network Intelligence & Coordination Lab (NICL). Before joining Bar-Ilan university, she was a postdoctoral associate at the MIT Media Lab, working with Prof. Alex ‘Sandy’ Pentland. She earned her Ph.D. from the Department of Industrial Engineering at Tel Aviv University. Before her Ph.D., she was head of Machine Learning Research at Endor, an MIT spinoff startup, where she led research efforts for over four years. She also holds an M.Sc. in Computer Science and a B.Sc. in Mathematics and Computer Science from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Her research explores the hidden mechanisms of connectivity, coordination, and influence in complex systems, focusing on challenges where data is fragmented, content-restricted, or encrypted. Using machine learning, graph theory and temporal modeling, she analyzes cross-system dependencies, detect coordinated activity, and develop frameworks for advancing security, resilience, and predictive analytics. These approaches are applied to cyber-security, finance, biology, and social systems, including detecting coordinated inauthentic behavior, analyzing financial synchronization effects and enabling privacy-preserving analysis.