Category: Announcements

Complexity Explorables | The Prisoner’s Kaleidoscope

This explorable illustrates beautiful dynamical patterns that can be generated by a simple game theoretic model on a lattice. The core of the model is the Prisoner’s Dilemma, a legendary game analyzed in game theory. In the game, two players can choose to cooperate or defect. Depending on their choice, they receive a pre-specified payoffs. The payoffs are chosen such that it seems difficult to make the right strategy choice.

Read the full article at: www.complexity-explorables.org

Journal launched: Frontiers in Complex Systems

Frontiers in Complex Systems publishes rigorously peer-reviewed quantitative research on Complex Systems, either theoretical, experimental, mathematical, computational or data description. Field Chief Editor Maxi San Miguel at the Institute for Cross-Disciplinary Physics and Complex Systems (IFISC) in Spain is supported by an outstanding Editorial Board of international experts. This open-access journal is to become the reference and natural publication outlet for the Complex Systems community at large, and to be at the forefront of disseminating and communicating scientific knowledge and technological innovation in the field to researchers, academics, entrepreneurs, companies, policy makers and the public worldwide.

Frontiers in Complex Systems covers fundamental questions, theories and general methodologies on complex systems as well as the cross-disciplinary application of these concepts and methods, often giving rise to new disciplines. It provides a forum for cross-disciplinary communication and welcomes quantitative research from different fields including Physics, Mathematics, Computer Sciences, Artificial Intelligence, Engineering, Climate change, Economics and Finance, Social Sciences, Linguistics, Ecology, Neuroscience, Health Sciences, Epidemics, Mobility and Transport, City Science, etc. Submissions to Frontiers in Complex Systems are made to appropriate specialty sections, each of which devoted to a specific sub-field and having their own expert editorial board. Aligned with the cross-disciplinary scope of the journal, some of these sections are shared with other Frontiers journals, providing an enhanced visibility of the research in different scientific communities.

More at: www.frontiersin.org

RESEARCHER ON THE CLASSIFICATION, ANALYSIS AND MODELLING OF ONLINE DISINFORMATION SPREADING BEHAVIOUR

FBK-CHuB is seeking a Researcher in the field of the classification, analysis and modelling of online disinformation spreading behaviour.
In particular, the candidate will be involved in a large European research project focused on the development of a platform tackling misinformation and disinformation across the EU by empowering scientific researchers and media practitioners with advanced AI-based technologies that: 1) allow multichannel (distinct online social media and news feeds), multilingual and multimodal (textual, visual and audio content) monitoring, detection and recording of misinformation and disinformation on online social media and traditional media; 2) estimate the risk of unreliable information consumption; 3) create a trustworthy online environment involving researchers, media practitioners and policy makers to facilitate the creation and distribution of reliable information and counter-narratives, while labelling and countering mis/disinformation.

Read the full article at: jobs.fbk.eu

Postdoc position on “Creating bio-inspired co-evolutionary incentive systems to promote recycling, using Internet of Things technologies” ETH Zurich

You will produce a simulation program demonstrating self-organizing logistic networks that become more circular and sustainable over time. 

You will create novel research breakthroughs and contribute to the ambitious ERC Advanced Investigator Grant on “Co-Evolving City Life” (CoCi) in subject areas connected to smart cities and digital societies. Your research focus will be on “Sustainable Cities and Coordination”. Given recent digital technologies such as the Internet of Things (sensor and communication networks), Artificial Intelligence, and blockchain technology, one can expect that production, logistics, and even waste, are becoming increasingly smart. Ideally, you will study how the convergence of these technologies can be used to fuel new approaches towards more sustainable production and logistics in an urban context. 

The research question we would like to answer is, how the approach of self-organized and federated, learning, networked multi-agent systems can be used to create socio-economic incentives that would promote the emergence of closed loops in a material supply network and could thereby boost the formation of a circular and sharing economy. We want to study, how a multi-dimensional real-time measurement, feedback and coordination system would have to be designed and operated in order to reach this goal. 

Together with our team, you will work on the mechanisms and effects of multi-dimensional real-time coordination, perform related agent-based simulations, and work towards demonstrating the approach in an application project. It will be great to couple the simulation program with a sensor-based environment (Raspberry Pi or Arduino, or other) that responds to measurements, flexibly adapts, and self-organizes. You will be the key researcher addressing these challenges or a subset of them (please specify), collaborating with a highly motivated team.

More at: www.jobs.ethz.ch

PhD opportunity at Sorbonne University: Transfer learning to inform the spread of other respiratory viruses : Application to Influenza using COVID19 and drug sales

In high-income countries, the COVID-19 pandemic fostered the generation of surveillance data at spatial and temporal resolution unseen before, providing comprehensive and accurate estimates of cases, detection capability, hospitalizations and deaths. At the same time, data describing behavioral response, mobility, mixing and compliance to public health measures have also become available with similar level of detail. Such an exhaustive picture of the unfurling of a pandemic was a first in human history, made possible because we live in the digital age. It does not imply that epidemiological surveillance will remain this way in the future. As COVID-19 becomes less virulent with vaccination and acquired immunity, political pressure is shifting away from comprehensive detection of cases, and individual willingness to get tested may also be declining. At the same time, corporate commitment to make proprietary data on human behavior available to scientific research (e.g., mobile phone data) is waning. This underpins the main scientific goal of this project: can we use the experience of “wartime” COVID-19 surveillance during years2020-2022 to improve epidemic understanding in the future “peacetime” period ? Typical data available for surveillance in peacetime is scarcer, for example syndromic surveillance for influenza and other respiratory viruses as reported in networks of general practitioners (GP), with limited virological confirmation. Other data sources, including participatory surveillance and drug sales, may complement such reports, but are less specific. Importantly, during the first 2 years of COVID-19, the aforementioned high-resolution data and the scarcer traditional data sources were observed together. We wish to exploit this overlap to build statistical and mathematical models that will extract more and better information from peacetime surveillance data. Specifically, we aim at generating estimates of incidence, severe cases, reproductive number that are better than those previously available in terms of spatial resolution, temporal resolution, predictive power (ability to make short-term forecasts and mid-term projections of epidemic activity). We will make use of AI/ML techniques to come up with models with which transfer of knowledge, for example from the dynamics of COVID-19 to that of Influenza, or from drug sales data to influenza, from mobility to infectious spread will make it possible to improve accurate estimation of influenza incidence and short term prediction. The impact of this project will be thus twofold. First, we will improve the knowledge and predictability of seasonal epidemic waves of airborne, directly transmitted pathogens. Second, we will provide with policymakers with new tools to inform public health response to seasonal acute respiratory illness.

More at: soundai.sorbonne-universite.fr