Krista H. Lagus

Krista H. Lagus serves as Professor of Digital Social Science at the University of Helsinki's Faculty of Social Science, where she co-founded and directed the Center for Social Data Science (CSDS) starting in 2019. Her interdisciplinary work bridges computational methods with social science inquiry to analyze complex societal behaviors through digital footprints.

Her educational foundation includes an M.Sc. in Computer Science (1996) and Ph.D. in Computer and Information Sciences (2000), both earned at Helsinki University of Technology (now Aalto University). This technical background enabled her transition into pioneering computational social science methodologies.

Lagus's research integrates artificial intelligence and social science through signature projects: WEBSOM for visualizing large text corpora via self-organizing maps, Citizen Mindscapes for gauging public opinion through digital communication analysis, and Morfessor, a groundbreaking unsupervised morphological segmentation algorithm widely adopted in natural language processing. Her work demonstrates how machine learning can decode societal patterns from digital traces.

Her scientific recognition includes:

• Academy Research Fellow, Finnish Academy of Sciences (2006-2012)

Lagus actively supervises graduate students in AI and digital social science while contributing to academic governance as an Editorial Board Member for PeerJ Computer Science. Her research leadership is anchored in the Center for Social Data Science, which she established to foster cross-disciplinary collaboration between computational and social scientists.

The Center for Social Data Science (CSDS) operates as her primary research ecosystem, driving initiatives that apply artificial intelligence to contemporary societal challenges. Through CSDS, Lagus cultivates methodological innovations that transform how social phenomena are observed and interpreted in the digital age.