I am super excited to have David Lazer (1,2) on the pod today. David Lazer needs no introduction. But here at lazypod we’re polite, so he get’s one anyway. David Lazer is a University Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Computer Sciences, Northeastern University, and Co-Director, NULab for Texts, Maps, and Networks. Prior to coming to Northeastern University, he was on the faculty at the Harvard Kennedy School (1998-2009). In 2019, he was elected a fellow to the National Ac...
Holy cow, it was great to chat with Brennan Klein (1). It’s another renaissance person on the Pod. In his research, Brennan attempts to understand how complex systems are able to represent, predict, and intervene on their surroundings across a number of different scales—all in ways that appear to maintain the statistical boundary between them and their environment. He uses this approach to study a range of phenomena from decision making, to experimental design, to causation and emergence in n...
Today we’re in for something a little bit different. Our guest is “Erik Hoel”, who’s not only a scientist, but also an exciting writer of books and essays. I read his fantastic first book “The Revelations” (1,2) last winters … and when I visited Boston this summer, I took a chance and sought him out. He graciously agreed to chat.For this interview I traveled out to Erik’s house that’s placed down along a long gravel road and surrounded by lakes and trees on Cape Cod. And we chatted in his fir...
Today on the Pod we are lucky to have Laura Alessandretti (1) visiting us.Laura is an Assistant Professor in Modelling of Human Dynamics at the Technical University of Denmark. She is interested in Computational Social Science, Data Science and Complex Networks. She studies aspects of human behavior combining analysis of large-scale datasets, analytical models and numerical simulations. Previously, she was a PostDoctoral researcher at the Copenhagen Centre for Social Data Science and at DTU C...
Hey Everyone, Today, we have another amazing guest. It’s Esteban Moro (1)!Esteban is a researcher, data scientist and professor at Universidad Carlos III (UC3M) in Spain and Visiting Professor at MIT Media Lab and MIT Connection Science at IDSS. Previously, I was researcher at University of Oxford. He is a native of Salamanca (Spain) … we talk about that … and hold a PhD in Physics.Esteban’s work lies in the intersection of big data and computational social science, with special attention to ...
Today’s guest on the pod is Baruch Barzel (1).Baruch has a wikipedia page (2), which summarizes his work very nicely. It says that he’s known for his work in the research of complex and stochastic systems, specifically on stochastic moment equations and universality in network dynamics.Then it says: “Also a public lecturer in Israel, and presents a weekly corner on Jewish thought in Israel National Radio.” And you’ll hear it when we talk! He’s a born communicator, a great interview.I would sa...
Today’s guest on the pod is Piotr Sapiezynski!Piotr (1) is an Associate Research Scientist at Northeastern University in Boston, MA.My interview with Piotr is part two of my three part series on of algorithms & filter bubbles. And today’s is a great conversation, not to be missed. Piotr really explain the logic and strong evidence that he (& a team of collaborators) has discovered around filter bubbles. I already knew a lot of this, but my mind was still blown.The core of Piotr’s work...
Today’s guest is Aniko Hannak. But for reasons I forgot to ask her in the podcast, everyone calls her Ancsa.Anyway, Ansca is an Assistant Professor at the computer science department of the University of Zürich (1). Ancsa’s work investigates a variety of content serving websites such as Search Engines, Online Stores, Job Search Sites or Freelance Marketplaces. In this quickly changing online ecosystem, companies track users' every move and feed the collected data into big data algorithms in o...
Today's guest is Rosemary Braun, an associate professor at the Department of Molecular Biosciences at Northwestern University.Rosemary works at the interface between mathematics, statistics, physics, and biology, where she develops and applies powerful computational methods to investigate living systems at multiple scales — from the atomic level, to the gene level, to the systems level, to the tissue/organismal level, and finally to the population level. We talk abou her 2018 paper "Uni...
It's a new season! And LazyPod is back with a strong line-up of guests. Today on the pod, for the inaugural episode of season 2, is Tina Eliassi-Rad. Tina is an incredibly accomplished scientist. She is a Professor of Computer Science at Northeastern University. She is also a core faculty member at Northeastern's Network Science Institute and the Institute for Experiential AI. In addition, she is an external faculty member at the Santa Fe Institute and the Vermont Complex Systems Center. Her ...
It’s Episode 10 and season finale time. But not to worry, #LazyPod will be back after the summer break.Today on the pod is Dashun Wang! Dashun is an Associate Professor and the Founding Director of the Center for Science of Science and Innovation at Northwestern University. He works on the Science of Science, turning the scientific method upon ourselves, using amazing new datasets and tools from complexity sciences and artificial intelligence.His research has been published repeated...
Today on the pod is Marta Sales-Pardo & Roger Guimera.What a great talk. We could have gone on for hours. Peer review, power-laws, becoming scientists, Bayesian statistics, and much, much more.Marta and Roger study fundamental problems in all areas of science including natural, social and economic sciences. They have expertise in a broad set of tools from statistical physics, network science, statistics and computer science.Both were many years at Northwestern before starting a group at U...
Big talk on the pod today. My guest is Martin Rosvall. A network science legend. The creator of the InfoMap community detection algorithm (1).Martin’s group (2) studies information flows through social and biological systems to understand their inner workings. By simplifying myriad network interactions into maps of significant information flows, they aim to address research questions about how diseases spread, plants respond to stress, and life distributes itself on Earth.In today’s talk we t...
Today on the Pod is Alice Schwarze. We talk about Alice’s paper "Motifs for processes on networks". Super exciting work! Before we get to the paper, we also talk about memes, how to get into Oxford, and being a young researcher today. Alice is a postdoctoral research scholar at the Department of Biology at the University of Washington. Her research combines ideas and methods from applied mathematics and network science to study complex systems in biology and neuroscience.She holds a DPhi...
I’ve got a treat for you today. Today’s author’s are Gourab Ghoshal and Petter Holme, who are here to talk about a classic paper. A paper they co-authored and published in PRL in 2006. The paper has a fantastic title, which is basically also a mini abstract. It is called “Dynamics of Networking Agents Competing for High Centrality and Low Degree” (1). In the podcast we get into it!Gourab is at at Rochester University, where he is an Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy with joint...
Today’s guest is Renaud Lambiotte Renaud is an associate professor at the Mathematical Institute of Oxford University, investigating processes taking place on large networks.In the episode, we talk about his story in science, the joy and value of exploring without a particular purpose, doing a PhD without publishing any papers, … and how reading classical texts by Boltzman and others early on has shaped the work Renaud does even to this day.When we get to the paper, we talk about Renaud’...
Today’s guest, Leidy Klotz, is a professor at the University of Virginia. He studies the science of design: how we transform things from how they are - to how we want them to be. Leidy wants to apply his work outside of academia:. He wants address climate change and systemic inequality, Leidy also works directly with organizations including the World Bank. Leidy has written more than 80 articles and two books. And Today we talk about his new paper (with a group of excellent co-authors) c...
Via the response to the first couple of episodes I realized that not only my science-friends listen to the podcast, but many other people.So while I want to keep this part short, I should probably provide a short intro to present the interview subject. Today’s guest is Dirk Brockmann. Dirk is a physicist and complex systems researcher. He’s a professor at the Department of Biology, Humboldt University of Berlin and the Robert Koch Institute, Berlin. Berfore returning to his native G...
This time we meet with physicist, expert on science of succes, and all-round amazing person, Roberta Sinatra. She talks about her recent paper "Success and luck in creative careers" (1). Along the way, we talk about her academic background, earlier work and what lead her to discuss the role of luck. Roberta uses a few slides for talk, you can find them here if you're listening to the audio podcast http://www.robertasinatra.com/pdf/Sinatra_toolazytoreadthepaper.pdf[0:00:00] Sune shameless...
This inaugural episode features physicist and transportation scientist Marta C. González (UC Berkeley) [1] explaining her paper "The TimeGeo modeling framework for urban mobility without travel surveys" (PNAS September 13, 2016 113 (37) E5370-E5378) [2].[1] https://ced.berkeley.edu/ced/faculty-staff/marta-gonzalez[2] https://www.pnas.org/content/113/37/E5370