Contact information
Hi!
My name is Federico. I am an Associate Professor in Network Science, Director of the PhD Program in Network Science, the first of its kind in Europe.
I also hold an Italian National Habilitation to Full Professor in both Theoretical Physics and Applied Physics.
**********NEW: PostDoctoral position:
Our group has an opening in Computational Social Science & human behavior. All this details can be found at this page.
**********NEW: Perspective PhD students:
Perspective PhD students are invited to apply to the PhD program in Network Science at DNDS CEU.
Deadline to start in September is typically around the end of January (no exceptions are possible). Admission to the program is centralised, with 5-6 fellowships assigned by the Doctoral Committee. If you are interested in working with me, please communicate this clearly in the required Research Statement, explaining how your interests and skills overlaps with my research lines.
For applicants aiming to start in 2026/2027, I am prioritising PhD students with more applied (rather than theory / methods-driven) interests, in particular in:
- Sport Analytics – e.g. performance analytics, collective behavior in sports, advanced sport statistics.
- Science of Science – e.g. scientific careers, collaboration networks, interdisciplinarity, team science, the evolution of scientific domains, inequalities in science.
- Human Behaviour – e.g. computational studies of individual and collective behavior, social interactions, socio-cognitive processes and the emergence of cooperation, behavioral experiments.
Applicants with strong backgrounds in network science, statistical physics, complex systems, computational sciences, statistics or quantitative social sciences and interested in the topics above are encouraged to apply, even without clear prior experience in these domains (please explain in the statement why you are interested in these topics).
**********
Before joining CEU (where I was a Research Fellow and an Assistant Professor before my current position) I was a PostDoc at University College London, at the University of Zurich and at the Paris Brain Institute. I hold a PhD from Queen Mary University of London (under the supervision of Vito Latora). Before that, I received BSc and MSc degrees in statistical physics from Sapienza University of Rome.
I work on network science, complex systems, dynamical systems, collective intelligence and computational social science. My research has appeared in leading international journals, including Science (1 publication), Nature (1), Nature Physics (3), Physical Review Letters (5), Nature Communications (7), Nature Human Behaviour (2), Science Advances (3), Nature Reviews Physics (2), Physics Reports (1), and more. Several of such contributions come as first or last-author, and have been selected as Editor's highlights.
A complete list of my publications can be found in Google Scholar.
My research has been recognized by the following international awards:
Erdos-Renyi Prize (2025). Most important award in Network Science worldwide.
Young Scientist Award for Socio- and Econophysics (2025).
Junior Award of the Complex Systems Society (2022).
Early Career Prize in Statistical and NonLinear Physics of the European Physical Society (2021).
CEU Award for Outstanding Research (2021).
My research has been funded as PI by multiple agencies after competitive evaluation processes, including several grants from FWF (Austria Science Fund) [e.g. on the structure of higher-order interactions, and on dynamics (spreading and synchronization) with higher-order interactions], and the US AFOSR.
I was the Chairman of NetSci2023, the flagship conference of the Network Science Society, which hosted 861 network scientists in Vienna in July 2023 (the largest NetSci ever!). I am the editor of the book 'Higher-order systems' for the Springer series Understanding Complex Systems. I am part of the Program Committees of NetSci, CCS, IC2S2 and CompleNet, and a former elected Chair of the young researchers of the Complex Systems Society. I am the Network Associate Editor for (Nature) Communications Physics, for which I curate publications in the field of network science and complex systems. In 2021 I have also guest-edited the first ever Focus Collection for this journal, on the topic of 'Higher-order interaction networks' (see here for a new Focus Collection on the same topic)
PhD Students (7 completed, 6 ongoing):
Completed: Milan Janosov (2020), Luis Natera (2021), Rebeka Szabo (2022), Leonardo Di Gaetano (2025), Sandeep Chowdhary (2025), Francesco Lotito (2025), Onkar Sadekar (2025)
Ongoing: Lorenzo Betti, Helcio Felippe, Berne' Nortier, Qiuya Gao, Kingshuk Dutta, Dima Mrad
Several PhD students working under my supervision have received the CEU Advanced Award for Doctoral Students.
My PhD students' backgrounds: Physics (7), Computer Science & Engineering (3), Mathematics (1), Sociology (1), Architecture & Urban Planning (1).
PostDocs:
Ongoing: Federico Malizia (2025 -), Francesco Lotito (2025 -)
Completed: Luca Gallo (2023-2024)
Teaching:
Structure & Dynamics of Complex Networks (PhD in Network Science)
Network Science (MSc in Social Data Science)
Introduction to Complex Systems (BSc in Data Science & Society)
I coordinate the software project HGX (Hypergraphx), a library to study networks with higher-order interactions:
https://github.com/HGX-Team/hypergraphx