I am a postdoc at Northwestern University, working with Danny Abrams, and currently a guest in Fariba Karimi’s group at CSH Vienna. I study a broad range of complex systems. One part of my work is dedicated to relatively simple complex systems; self-organizing processes such as collective motion (fish schools or bird flocks) or collective synchronization (firefly swarms flashing in unison, or pacemaker cells in the heart). Right now I am focusing on modeling and analyzing the synchronous patterns of southeast Asian fireflies. This specific species stands out for its simplicity, as the fireflies are predominantly immobile while synchronizing, allowing us to directly relate them to established coupled oscillator models.
In a slightly different vein, I am also working on human collective behavior. One of my projects is focused on the formation of collaborations between scientists at conferences. How do these short meetings affect the course of these scientists’ careers? Can we predict whether they will publish peer-reviewed publications together, years after initially meeting at a conference for a few days? Lastly, I am also working on analysis of football (soccer) matches. I am analyzing the trajectories of the players (and the ball) from professional matches, with the hope of gaining new insight about how teams operate as a whole.
Network Inequality Group 