Author Archives: mcos

The Atlas for the Aspiring Network Scientist v2

NERDS member Michele Coscia has updated his textbook for the Network Analysis and Advanced Network Science classes he teaches at ITU. This “Atlas for the Aspiring Network Scientist”, has now reached version 2.0, and 916 pages, and is available for anyone to read for free: https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.00863

Website: https://www.networkatlas.eu/

The new edition has a much improved coverage on graph neural networks, network data uncertainty, and background knowledge in statistics, machine learning, probability theory, and linear algebra.

Even version 2.0 has big margins for improvements. Please contact Michele with any comments.

Find a more detailed explanation of The Atlas for the Aspiring Network Scientist on Michele’s page: https://www.michelecoscia.com/?p=2393.

Nikos Salamanos has joined NERDS

At NERDS we welcome our latest member: Nikos Salamanos!

Nikos joins us as postdoctoral researcher, coming from the Cyprus University of Technology, where he was working on applying network analysis to study social media information dissemination.

Nikos will work on an interdisciplinary Villum Synergy project on archaeological data, where he’ll develop network analysis methods to deal with highly biased and incomplete data. The idea is to test how network analysis can aid archaeological research, ultimately applying the newly developed techniques to data retrieved from the remnants of the Roman Empire.

Nikos will be supervised by Michele Coscia and will work jointly with a team of archaeologists led by Tom Brughmans at Aarhus University. Welcome!

Anders Aagaard Kristensen has joined NERDS

At NERDS we welcome our latest member: Anders Aagaard Kristensen!

Anders joins us as PhD student, coming from the University of South Denmark, where he was working on machine learning methods.

His PhD project will be about the use of deep learning and generative models to understand leaves of absence in work data. The idea is to predict, simulate and, ultimately, make interventions, so that workers will have less taxing working schedules, leading to fewer leaves for sickness reasons.

Anders will be working jointly with NERDS and the National Research Center for Work Environment (NFA), which finances his fellowship and provides the data. He will be supervised by Michele Coscia at NERDS.

Welcome Lasse, the latest NERDS PhD Student!

NERDS keeps growing! This month we’re welcoming Lasse Alsbirk as our latest addition to the team!

Lasse is a co-financed PhD student and at the center of a multi-partnered research project! He will work at the intersection of the Danish Police (financial crimes section), the AI Pioneer Center, and NERDS @ ITU. His project will focus on the application and development of network science tools to fight financial crimes. He has valuable abroad experience, having received his master degree in Israel and he will be with us for four years.

Welcome, Lasse!

Postdoc wanted for analyzing networks of the Roman Empire

We are looking for a postdoc to work on a cool multidisciplinary project on networks and the Roman Empire ⚔️, at the NERDS (NEtwoRks, Data, and Society) research group at IT University of Copenhagen. Apply here if interested (deadline May 23rd)! 

In the project, you will be expected to develop network analysis techniques to work with extremely incomplete and heavily biased archaeological data. The idea is to try to reconstruct social relationships between different places in the Roman Empire. We are going to integrate remains at various sites with the most detailed to date reconstruction of Roman mobility. Check out this cool Roman roads network picture. That’s the stuff you’re going to work with!

The work is part of a Villum Synergy project. You’ll be supervised directly by Michele Coscia. You will interact on a regular basis with a team of cool archaeologists from Aarhus University, headed by Tom Brughmans.

Here’s the link to read more about the call and apply (deadline May 23rd): https://candidate.hr-manager.net/ApplicationInit.aspx?cid=119&ProjectId=181689&DepartmentId=3439&MediaId=1282

The NERDS group is a down-to-earth and fun place to be. Copenhagen is often named as the best city in the world to live in, and for good reasons. It’s world-renowned for food, beer, art, music, architecture, the Scandinavian “hygge”, and much more. In Denmark, parental leave is generous, and child-care is excellent and cheap.

New Paper on Sampling Social Media + Call for Abstract @ Networks21 Satellite

NERDS member Michele Coscia is having a busy March!

He published a new paper in the TKDD journal titled “Noise Corrected Sampling of Online Social Networks“. The paper focuses on a new way to perform topological network sampling, i.e. to explore a network by following its edges such that the explored (sub)network is as similar as possible to the whole structure. In this paper, the method uses a Bayesian framework to estimate the amount of novel information a new connection brings about into the currently explored sample.

He is also organizing a satellite for the Networks21 conference. The satellite is titled “Complex Networks in Economics and Innovation”. The organizers are looking for contributed abstracts on network applications on research about economic development and innovation. Read more on the official website, or submit your abstract to the submission site.