Lecture series on Computational social science at USI in Lugano

From e-mails to social networks, from credit cards to medical analyses: human actions in today’s world are characterised by data, by digital traces through which it may be possible to draw an extremely detailed profile of our behaviour. This is the field of activity of a new discipline called Computational social science that is growing in importance and that integrates computational with social sciences.

USI, having realised the relevance of this new sector and possessing high-level competencies both in computational and in social sciences, has decided to organise a series of public conferences on this topic. Eight of the worldwide leading experts in the field, who are active at prestigious research centres such as Harvard, Northwestern University, Aalto University, Cornell University, Carnegie Mellon University and ETH Zurich, have been invited to Lugano Campus.

The conferences, whose exact date and time will be communicated soon, are coordinated by Prof. Alessandro Lomi of the Faculty of Economics and will be dedicated to the following topics: 

• Scaling and universality in collective social phenomena (16.12.13)
  December 16-17, 2013 Professor Santo Fortunato, Aalto University, Finland
• Quantification of the High Level of Endogeneity and of Structural Regime Shifts in financial markets (21.01.14)
  January 21 2014 Professor Didier Sornette, ETH Zurich
• The Power of Meta-Networks for Rapid Ethnographic Assessment
  February 26-28, 2014 Professor Kathleen, Carley Carnegie Mellon University
• The Science of Social Systems, and What Physics Can Contribute
  March 7, 2014  Professor Dirk Helbing, ETH Zurich
• The Mesh of Civilizations in the Global Network of Interpersonal Communication
  March 24-28, 2014 Professor Michael Macy, Cornell University
• Computational models and big data in the study of human social systems
  May 20, 2014 Dr. Jukka-Pekka Onnela, Harvard Univesity
• The emergence of a computational social science: opportunities and barriers
  June 4-5 , 2014 Professor LazerNortheastern University and  Harvard University
• Atypical Combinations in Scientific Impact
  June 30 – July 1, 2014 Professor Brian Uzzi Northwestern University