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 say that Baruch studies how network structure and dynamics impact one another. The he wants to predict how signals spread along network pathways. That he wants to uncover the network components that contribute to the system’s stability and resilience, to detectthe nodes and links that enable information to flow throughout the system. But, of course, his ultimate goal is to systematically use complex network data to understand, predict and control the observed behavior of the system he cares about.

We talk about all that in the paper that I’ve been too lazy to read: “Spatiotemporal signal propagation in complex networks” (3), we might even spill over into  “Reviving a failed network through microscopic interventions” (4).

References
(1) https://www.barzellab.com
(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baruch_Barzel
(3) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-018-0409-0
(4) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-021-01474-y

Credits
The podcast has theme music by Waylon Thornton (and a little bit by me as well). WT's songs are "American Heart" and "Seven". Via freemusicarchive.org and licenced under CC BY-NC-SA. The podcast was funded in part by the Villum Foundation.