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.
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 and computational social science. My research has appeared in leading international journals, including leading physics journals such as Nature Physics (3 times), Physical Review Letters (3), Nature Reviews Physics (1) and Physics Reports (1), as well as interdisciplinary venues such as Science Advances (3), Nature Communications (5), Nature Human Behavior (1) and a short correspondence in Nature. Several of such contributions come as first or last-author, and have been selected as Editor's highlights.
I coordinate the software project HGX (Hypergraphx), a library to study networks with higher-order interactions:
https://github.com/HGX-Team/hypergraphx
I was the Chairman of NetSci2023, the flagship conference of the Network Science Society, whose hosted 861 network scientists in Vienna in July 2023 (the largest NetSci ever!). I am a former Elected Chair of the Young Researchers of the Complex Systems Society, and a current Elected Member of its council. 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, an elected member of the Council of the Complex Systems Society and a former elected Chair of the young researchers of the Complex Systems Society. I am the Network Associate Editor for (Nature) Communications Physics, the little sister of Nature Communications, 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'.
I also hold an Italian National Habilitation to Full Professor in both Theoretical Physics and Applied Physics.
In 2022 I received the Junior Award of the Complex Systems Society:
https://cssociety.org/news/122
In 2021 I received the Early Career Prize in Statistical and NonLinear Physics of the European Physical Society:
https://www.eps.org/members/group.aspx?id=85204
In 2021 I have also received the CEU Award for Outstanding Research:
https://www.ceu.edu/2021-excellence
I use my background in statistical physics and complexity science to describe social networks and understand the human brain. I am an expert of generalised network structures (networks, but 'beyond simple networks'!), including multilayer networks and higher-order networks. I also work a lot on understanding how network structure affects and determines dynamics and the emergence of often unexpected collective behavior. My favorite dynamical processes are concerned with the modeling of human behavior, including epidemic spreading, social and cultural dynamics, innovation dynamics and evolutionary game theory, but I have also worked a lot on random walk and diffusion, reaction-diffusion and pattern formation, synchronization (this one also describes the brain, e.g. epilepsy!). I also work with datasets on ecological networks, large-scale publication data, online and offline social interactions and escape rooms...
I was the main advisor of Milan Janosov (PhD completed in 2020), Luis Natera (PhD completed in 2021) and Rebeka Szabo (PhD completed in 2022). Currently I am the main advisor of several other PhD students. Two of the PhD students working under my supervision have received the CEU Advanced Award for Doctoral Students.
My current website is experiencing a major refurbishment to come back stronger and brighter (!), but luckily my Google Scholar's profile can still be useful to track my most recent research.