Networks Theory, Applied Microeconomics, Industrial Organization and Social Interactions.
Social interaction leading to the adoption better eating habits by households at all income levels
Archaeological Simulation of Social Interactions, mainly between hunter gatherers societies.
I live near Cambridge, and recently I developed agent-based land-use models with Geography PhD students there. I also took part in the “Cybernetics and Society” seminar.
Previously, I spent three years at Ludwig-Maximillians University, Munich, working on Human-Environment Relations and Sustainability, and over two and a half years at Surrey University, working on Innovation with Nigel Gilbert in the Centre for Research in Social Simulation (CRESS). The project at Surrey resulted in a book in 2014, “Simulating Innovation: Computer-based Tools for Rethinking Innovation”. My PhD topic, modelling human agents who energise or de-energise each other in social interactions, drew upon the work of sociologist Randall Collins. My multi-disciplinary background includes degrees in Operational Research (MSc) and Philosophy (BA/MA).
I got hooked on agent-based modelling and complexity science some time around 2000, via the work of Brian Arthur, Stuart Kauffman, Robert Axelrod and Duncan Watts (no relation!).
I am an agent-based modeller specialising in Netlogo and Excel/VBA. My recent interests include Human-Environment Relations, Innovation, Collective Intelligence and Governance Systems, and the Collapse of Complex Societies.
I have a longer term aim to study the modelling of Institutions, especially the cognitive architecture for agents who can recognise, learn and innovate in institutions.
If you’re based near Cambridge and have an idea for a modelling project, for the cost of a beer/coffee I’m always willing to offer advice.
I received a Ph.D. in Economics at the University of Namur (Belgium) in June 2012 with a thesis titled “Essays in Information Aggregation and Political Economics”.
After two years at the Research Center for Educational and Network Studies (Recens) of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, I joined the Department of Economics “Marco Biagi” of the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia in January 2015 and then the Department of Agricultural and Food Sciences of the University of Bologna.
I am currently a Lecturer in Financial Computing at the Department Computer Science (Financial Computing and Analytics group) - University College London. Moreover I am an affiliated researcher of the DYNAMETS - Dynamic Systems Analysis for Economic Theory and Society research group and an affiliate member of the Namur Center for Complex Systems (Naxys).
My research interests concern the computational study of financial markets (microstructure, systemic properties and behavioral bias), of social Interactions on complex networks (theory and experiments), the evolution of cooperation in networks (theory and experiments) and the study of companies strategies in the digital economy.
I am Professor in Computational Resilience Economics at the University of Twente (the Netherlands), which I joined in 2010. In September 2017 I also joined University of Technology Sydney (Australia) as Professor of Computational Economic Modeling working with spatial simulation models to study socioeconomic impacts of disasters and emergence of resilience across scales. I was honored to be elected as a Member of the De Jonge Akademie of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences (DJA/ KNAW in 2016) and of Social Sciences Council (SWR/KNAW in 2017). From 2009 to 2015 I have been working part-time as an economist at Deltares – the leading Dutch knowledge institute in the field of water management – specializing in economics of climate change, with focus on floods and droughts management.
I am interested in the feedbacks between policies and aggregated outcomes of individual decisions in the context of spatial and environmental policy-making. The issue of social interactions and information diffusion through networks to affect economic behavior is highly relevant here. My research line focuses on exploring how behavioral changes at micro level may lead to critical transitions (tipping points/regime shifts) on macro level in complex adaptive human-environment systems in application to climate change economics. I use agent-based modelling (ABM) combined with social science methods of behavioral data collection on individual decisions and social networks. This research line has been distinguished by the NWO VENI and ERC Starting grants and the Early Career Excellence award of the International Environmental Modeling Society (iEMSs). In 2018 I was invited to serve as the Associate Editor of the Environmental Modelling & Software journal, where I have been a regular Member of the Editorial Board since 2013.