Penn Postdocs in the News: Lluís Danús, Ph.D., investigates how informal academic networks shape scientific success
Penn Postdoctoral Fellow Lluís Danús, Ph.D., publishes research on how informal academic networks influence scientific impact
PHILADELPHIA, PA — Dr. Lluís Danús, a postdoctoral researcher at the Annenberg School for Communication and a member of the Center for Information Networks and Democracy (CIND) at the University of Pennsylvania, is featured in recent research examining how informal academic networks influence scholarly productivity and impact.
Dr. Danús earned his Ph.D. in Complex Systems from Rovira i Virgili University in 2023, following a B.Sc. from the University of Barcelona and an M.Sc. from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia. His research focuses on computational social science, particularly how inequalities shape social and digital interactions and how emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence may influence those dynamics.
At Penn, Dr. Danús works with Sandra González-Bailón, Carolyn Marvin Professor of Communication and Sociology, and co-director of CIND. His work combines network science and computational methods to better understand the structures that shape scientific communities and the circulation of knowledge.
Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the study analyzes collaboration patterns across more than two decades of political science publications. The findings suggest that informal scholarly relationships may play an important role in shaping research visibility, productivity, and academic impact.
The study, “Informal Connections Outweigh Co-authorship Ties in Academic Impact,” was authored by Lluís Danús, Sandra González-Bailón, Carolina Torreblanca, Will Dinneen, and Guy Grossman.
Dr. Danús’s research reflects Penn’s continued leadership in computational social science, network science, and the study of democratic information systems.
We are proud to celebrate Dr. Danús’s accomplishments and his contributions to advancing interdisciplinary research on academic collaboration and scientific communities.