NamSor presentation at Panel Discussion
Diaspora Scientists: Canada’s untapped resource of global knowledge networks / les scientifiques de la diaspora : ressource inexploitée canadienne de réseaux mondiaux de connaissances
Researchers Findings, Diaspora Scientists and Diaspora Networks
Valerie LaTraverse (moderator) Deputy Director, Policy Research, Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Canada
Elian Carsenat- Mapping Scientific Diasporas in Canada, applying onomastics on bibliographic databases
Margaret Walton- Diasporic-led investment in skill development and training in the Indian Health care sector.
Sujata Ramachandran- Prospects and Challenges of Diaspora Engagement: South African Diaspora in Canada
Halla Thorsteinsdottir- The Role of Diaspora in International Scientific Collaborations
2. Founder Bio
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Elian CARSENAT, a computer scientist trained at ENSIIE/INRIA, started
his career at JP Morgan in Paris in 1997. He later worked as
consultant and managed business & IT projects in London, Paris,
Moscow and Shanghai.
In 2012, Elian created NamSor, a piece of sociolinguistics software to
mine the 'Big Data' and better understand international flows of
money, ideas and people. NamSor helps answer the perennial
question all countries ask about their diasporas – who are they,
where are they and what are they doing.
NamSor has been used to attract Foreign Direct Investments (FDI), to
build-up international collaboration within scientific communities, to
attract and facilitate Diaspora investment in Start-ups...
as well as other use cases.
http://fr.linkedin.com/in/eliancarsenat/en
3. NamSor sorts Names
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Names are meaningful : we use sociolinguistics to extract their
semantics and deliver actionable intelligence.
Names reflect cultural Identity
NamSor data mining software
recognizes the linguistic or cultural
origin of names in any alphabet /
language, with fine grain and high
accuracy.
5. Mining 3M twitter names to map Diasporas
Who are they, where are they and what are they doing?
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Source: Twitter
Source: Twitter
Visualization : CartoDB
Data Mining: NamSor
6. Mapping Talents in Cancer Research
(in collaboration with French INSERM)
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Thomson Reuters WebOfScience (6 countries, 250k scientists, 50k papers)
“Analysts uncovered amazing patterns in the way scientists’ names correlate with whom they publish, and who
they cite in their papers - not just in case of a particular country, but globally. Tania Vichnevskaia of the French
National Institute for Health (INSERM) presented the paper ‘Applying onomastics to scientometrics‘ at IREG
International symposium 2015 organised by University of Maribor and Shanghai Jiao Tong University. The
paper was prepared jointly with NamSor, a private start-up company specialized in mapping international
Diasporas.”
Source: WoS; Data Mining: INSERM with NamSor
7. Cancer Research in Poland and Slovenia
Examining the ‘brain drain’
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In the Polish Corpus, we look at co-
authors with Polish names, affiliated
abroad.
Top countries:
1. US,
2. Great-Britain,
3. Germany.
In the Slovenian Corpus, we look at co-
authors with Slovenian names,
affiliated abroad.
Top countries:
1. Great-Britain,
2. US,
3. Germany.
Source: WoS; Data Mining: INSERM with NamSor
8. Mapping a Scientific Diaspora
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But in relative terms, almost twice more Iranian scholars in Canada compared to the US.
9. Scholar names in some Canadian Universities
Chinese, Indian, Iranian, Moroccan, Italian names
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10. Our vision on Scientific Diasporas
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They impact academic ranking (Universities, Scholars)
Benefits for Canada (education/science, innovation,
FDI/trade/economic development, ...) and potential
benefits for countries of origin too
Scientometrics combined with onomastics reveal
Co-authorship and international collaboration
Citing patterns and cultural biases
‘Brain drain’, ‘Brain gain’ and migration patterns