CSS/Italy

Italian Chapter of Complex Systems Society

Science

events

Understanding Complexity through Italian scientist talks

The event will be held online on May 25th at 9:00-13:00
To register, please send an email to luca.gallo@phd.unict.it with the subject: “participation in the workshop understanding complexity”

9:00-9:15 Opening
09:15-10:05 prof. Roberto Benzi, Università di Roma Tor Vergata, “The Physics of Noise”
10:05-10:25 dr. Prajwal Padmanabha, Università di Padova,  Biological and Ecological Complex systems: Linear Response Theory in the presence of Absorbing Boundary
10:25-10:45 dr. Nicolò Pedrani, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genova e Università di Milano-Bicocca,  OxDNA to study species interactions
10:45-11:05 dr. Marco Zanchi, Università degli studi di Milano, Complexity in materials: the case of 2D silica glass
11:05-11:20 break
11:20-12:10 Francesca Colaiori, ISC-CNR Roma e Università La Sapienza di Roma, Co-occurring epidemics
12:10-12:30 dr. Alessandra Corso, Università di Catania, Inferring line failures in complex networks
12:30-12:50 dr. Giulia Bertagnolli, Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Trento, Functional rich-clus in complex networks
12:50-13:10 dr. Anna Mancini, Università di Roma Tor Vergata, Self-induced consensus formation among Reddit users on the GameStop short squeeze

events

PhD Program in Modeling and Engineering Risk and Complexity @ School for Advanced Studies of University of Naples Federico II

NEW 4-YEAR PHD PROGRAM IN MODELING AND ENGINEERING RISK AND COMPLEXITY AT THE
NEW SCHOOL FOR ADVANCED STUDIES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NAPLES FEDERICO II

From climate change and sustainability to seismic engineering and Industry 4.0, all the crucial challenges facing mankind today require the ability to understand and engineer ever growing reliable interdependent, complex and interconnected systems and infrastructures.

The Call for Applications for the new 4 year PhD Program in Modeling and Engineering Risk and Complexity of the Scuola Superiore Meridionale (a brand new School for Advanced Studies in Naples) is now out and available at

http://www.ssm.unina.it/en/calls-and-news/ [1]

We are looking for bright and ambitious students from any area of Mathematics, Science and Engineering to join this exciting new program.

6 FULLY FUNDED 4-YEAR SCHOLARSHIPS ARE AVAILABLE THIS YEAR

Each scholarship includes a stipend of EUR 19,000 per year which is increased by 50% when the student is spending time abroad

Students expected to spend at least 9-12 months abroad during their PhD.

Each Scholarship also includes approx EUR 4,000 for research costs/travel per year

Applicants must submit a brief scientific report (description of their MSc thesis work, CV, personal statement and reference letters) following the instructions provided at the website above BY NO LATER THAN 30TH JUNE 2020.

Successful candidates will be announced the end of July 2020 with course officially starting on 2nd November 2020.

For any further information contact the PhD Coordinator, Prof Mario di Bernardo, at merc@unina.it or check out the PhD website at
http://www.ssm.unina.it/en/modeling-and-engineering-risk-eng-and-complexity-merc-eng/ [2]



Links:
——
[1] http://www.ssm.unina.it/en/calls-and-news/
[2] http://www.ssm.unina.it/en/modeling-and-engineering-risk-eng-and-complexity-merc-eng/

events

1st Toffee Workshop on disinformation

TOFFEe – https://toffee.imtlucca.it/ – is an interdisciplinary research project funded by IMT School For Advanced Studies Lucca. The project ambition is to overcome some of the limitations of existing social platforms, which often dedicate little attention to trustworthy interactions among peers and to reliability of information. The aim of the project is to increase people’s confidence on the data they get and who they follow, while minimising the risk of exposure to fake information and malicious actions.

As part of the dissemination activities of the project, on October 24th and 25th, 2019, we organise an International Workshop where different approaches for fighting fakes will be discussed. You can find all infos at https://toffee.imtlucca.it/ We are glad to invite you to the 1st TOFFEe workshop and contribute with your latest results on methodologies for fighting disinformation.We would be delighted if you could join us. The registration to the workshop is free, just fill the form following the link
https://toffee.imtlucca.it/. We kindly ask you to register before the 9th of October. The registration comprehends two coffee breaks and one lunch.

Analogously, we would be delighted if you could contribute to the workshop with your latest results. The slot for the contributions last nearly 15 minutes, plus some time for questions. You can send us a 2 pages abstract at the present email address. The deadline for sending the abstract is on the 25th of September. We will return our decision on the 2nd of October.

Looking forward to meeting you in Lucca in October, we send you our

best regards,

Rocco De Nicola (project coordinator)
Guido Caldarelli
Irene Crimaldi
Marinella Petrocchi
Fabio Saracco

research

The multiplex network of human diseases

Arda Halu, Manlio De Domenico, Alex Arenas and Amitabh Sharma
npj Systems Biology and Applications 5, 15 (2019)
DOI: 10.1038/s41540-019-0092-5

Untangling the complex interplay between phenotype and genotype is crucial to the effective characterization and subtyping of diseases. Here we build and analyze the multiplex network of 779 human diseases, which consists of a genotype-based layer and a phenotype-based layer. We show that diseases with common genetic constituents tend to share symptoms, and uncover how phenotype information helps boost genotype information. Moreover, we offer a flexible classification of diseases that considers their molecular underpinnings alongside their clinical manifestations. We detect cohesive groups of diseases that have high intra-group similarity at both the molecular and the phenotypic level. Inspecting these disease communities, we demonstrate the underlying pathways that connect diseases mechanistically. We observe monogenic disorders grouped together with complex diseases for which they increase the risk factor. We propose potentially new disease associations that arise as a unique feature of the information flow within and across the two layers.

research

The fragility of decentralised trustless socio-technical systems

Manlio De Domenico and Andrea Baronchelli
EPJ Data Science 8, 2 (2019)
DOI: 10.1140/epjds/s13688-018-0180-6

The blockchain technology promises to transform finance, money and even governments. However, analyses of blockchain applicability and robustness typically focus on isolated systems whose actors contribute mainly by running the consensus algorithm. Here, we highlight the importance of considering trustless platforms within the broader ecosystem that includes social and communication networks. As an example, we analyse the flash-crash observed on 21st June 2017 in the Ethereum platform and show that a major phenomenon of social coordination led to a catastrophic cascade of events across several interconnected systems. We propose the concept of “emergent centralisation” to describe situations where a single system becomes critically important for the functioning of the whole ecosystem, and argue that such situations are likely to become more and more frequent in interconnected socio-technical systems. We anticipate that the systemic approach we propose will have implications for future assessments of trustless systems and call for the attention of policy-makers on the fragility of our interconnected and rapidly changing world.

jobs

Postdoc position @CoMuNe Lab in Trento

Q@TN is a joint initiative of the University of Trento, the Bruno Kessler Foundation, and the  National Research Council aimed at coordinating their present and future activities in the field of Quantum Science and Technologies. Q@TN promotes research projects, technological transfer, education and training.

The project “ARTificial Intelligence for Quantum Systems” (ARTIQS) is inherently interdisciplinary, fostering cross-fertilization between the machine-learning and network-theory communities in ICT, the computational physics community and materials scientists in Trento, with a unique opportunity for the post-doctoral associate to work within and beyond the realm of quantum physics.

Official call: here