Luis A. Martínez Vaquero

I am a physicist by training and did my PhD in the field of cosmological numerical simulations. After that I switched fields and I centered my efforts in the application of game theory to social systems. I studied the emergence of moral codes and action rules in a reputation-based model and analyzed the emergence of intolerance under economic stress. Currently I am a postdoctoral researcher at VUB in Brussels where we are covering different topics: common pool resource games, collective risk problems, effect of commitments, and other social mechanisms. My main hobby is outdoor activities, especially mountaineering.

 

David Catteeuw

As a computer scientist, I worked several years as a programmer. In search for a new challenge, I became teaching assistant and started a PhD at the VUB in 2008. Since then, I worked on several topics. I studied the emergence of coordination among agents that compete for scarce resources in minority games and scheduling applications. I am currently developping new search and optimization techniques. My thesis, which I will defend at the end of this year, studies three mechanisms that may lead to the emergence of honest signaling: common interest, costly signals, and punishment.

 

Brais Álvarez Pereira 

I am currently becoming an applied microeconomist, studying my PhD at the European University Institute, in Florence. My research focuses on the role of information, social influence and identity on the behavior of agents in different markets and settings. Some of the topics include the Spanish housing market during the rise of the bubble, the behavior of investors during Bitcoin bubbles, the triggering of mass revolts during the Arab Spring, the influence of peer effects on the efficiency of public servants in Pakistan, and the support for independence across the European Regions. 

 

Alberto Antonioni

I am an Italian mathematician who decided to apply some math playing games. I am a fourth year PhD student affiliated to the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, and the Carlos III University of Madrid, Spain, where I am carrying out a joint supervision of doctoral studies. Until now, my research work has dealt with three main interrelated topics: evolutionary game theory, complex networks, and experimental economics. I am particularly interested in investigating phenomena that allow cooperation evolve and spread in a population of selfish individuals. Recently, I studied spatial networks and their application to evolutionary games by numerical simulations and human experiments.

 

Carlos A Lugo

I'm a theoretical physicist working on mathematical and computational models of biological systems. Currently I am working in  problems related to:

1.-Calcium cycling and cardiac dynamics by studying  models operating at scales ranging from the sub cellular level to tissue, which could  be discrete or continuous, stochastic or deterministic depending on such scales.

2.-Evolution: The topology induced in the space of phenotypes by genotype-phenotype mappings for the case of RNA molecules. And genome evolution of pathogens as the result of host-jumps. 

These problems involve Non-Linear dynamics, Stochastic processes, Graph theory, etc...

I am based at The Sainsbury Laboratory in the United Kingdom.

 

Dipankar Sengupta

I am a Bioinformatician and did my PhD in the domain of Clinical Informatics, from Jaypee University of Information Technology, India. A curiosity to unveil the intricacies of problem statements in life and clinical science, passion to solve them with the aid of bioinformatics skills, zeal to apply my knowledge in the learning process & share the experiences with leading Scientists and Industrialists defines my purpose. My interest lies in development of integrative storage solution for patients, pertaining to their clinical, genomic and proteomic data; development of data mining algorithms specifically temporal mining of patient's data; and looking for comorbid patterns. Currently, I am working as Post doctoral researcher in COMO-AI Lab at Vrije Universiteit Brussels, Belgium in BRiDGEIris project funded by Innoviris. The project focuses on development of big data platform for sharing and discovery in clinical genomics in Brussels region.

 

Cecilia Siliansky de Andreazzi

I am a Brazilian ecologist in my third year PhD at the University of São Paulo. I am interested in how species interact in ecological communities and how this influences species ecology and evolution, particularly in antagonistic interactions such as parasite-host. For that, I use ecological data, network theory and ecological and evolutionary models.
 

 

Iván S. Razo-Zapata

I'm a computer scientist with experience in the fields of service science, artificial intelligence, semantic web and business modeling. I hold B.Sc and M.Sc. degrees in computer science from Autonomous University of Hidalgo – UAEH (Mexico) and PhD from VU University Amsterdam (The Netherlands). During my PhD research, I developed a semantic framework to answer customer needs by offering commercial services that match those needs. I joined Vrije Universiteit Brussel in October 2014 and started working in a project called Scanergy, which aims to provide a modular and scalable system to trade green energy between prosumers. 

 

Ioannis Zisis

Doing my PhD (3rd year) at ULB in evolutionary game theory, experimental and behavioral economics. My masters degree is in electrical and computer engineer, from the NTUA. Our main research questions refer to the formation of stable groups while interacting in variations of dictator game. We have already performed a couple of game theory experiments (at Tilburg and Koln universities) in order to obtain our own data and then validate the computational models that we are developping.

 

Riccardo Gallotti

 

Marta Lenartowicz

I’m a Post-Doc researcher at the Global Brain Institute, VUB. I focus on social systems, understood in a Luhmannian sense as autopoietic entities build of communication - entities for whom humans serve as an environment, not constituents. I think of them as of autonomously cognising outcomes of evolution (and I’m currently busy with providing a theoretical rationale for my use of the concept of cognition in this context). I did my PhD at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, researching autopoiesis of universities and its role in their resistance to change. My plan is to integrate my understanding of social systems into modelling of complex sociotechnical and/or socioeconomic systems. Such integration requires a shift of attention from individual humans (as agents) to distinction-based strings of communication that create the social domain.

 

Jelena Grujic

I am a physicist by training working in different areas of complex systems, like game theory (theoretical and experimental), complex networks, intermittent dynamics etc. I finished my undergraduate studies at the University of Belgrade, Serbia and later I did my PhD in experimental and theoretical game theory at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain. Afterward I did a postdoc at Imperial College London developing models for intermittent systems. At the moment I am a postdoc at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium.

 

Zoran Levnajic

My education is in statistical physics and complex systems. Presently I am working on various aspects of complex networks, including development of network reconstruction and network comparison methods, network modeling of biological and social phenomena and bibliometric networks. I graduated from University of Trieste in Italy, did my MSc at University of California, Santa Barbara in US, got my PhD from Jozef Stefan Insitute in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and were a postdoc at Potsdam University in Germany. Currently, I am assistant professor at the Faculty of information studis in Novo mesto, Slovenia. Further details are available on my webpage.

 

Claudius Gräbner

I am a PhD student in economics in my second year. So far, I have done some theoretical work on how the concept of complexity fits with existing schools of thought in economics, especially neoclassical, institutional and evolutionary economics (with a focus on evolutionary game theory). I have worked on the methodological foundations of agent based models, and how they can provide some value added to economic enquiry.
In my more applied work I use agent based models to elaborate on adequate policy measures in a complex environment. In particular I am working on how the structure of a population (i.e. mainly its interaction network and its institutions) affects the distribution of capabilities and income - and how policy measures have to be designed to effectively address deprivation and poverty in such contexts.

 

Nicolas K. Scholtes

I am a Ph.D candidate at the University of Namur and Catholic University of Louvain, affiliated to the project on Financial Complex Systems. My current research focuses on the simulation of interbank networks and the application of tools from the complex systems and Agent-Based Modelling literature to understanding the motivations behind bank borrowing/lending behaviour as well as the influence/effectiveness of monetary policy transmission when these considerations are taken into account.I am particularly interested in concepts pertaining to central banking, financial stability and the design and subsequent implementation of regulatory techniques within this framework.

 

Manuel Pegalajar

I'm a computer engineer, and associate professor with the Department of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence in the University of Granada. Traditionally, my research activity has been focused in the development of training and optimization algorithms for artificial neural networks, applied to solve problems from the areas of time series prediction, modelling, and analytical chemistry. My expertise also covers metaheuristics, and specially genetic algorithms and multi-objective optimization. Lately, I've been working in Ambient Intelligence, and more specifically in human behaviour recognition in monitored environments. To the date, I'm learning wireless sensor networks to optimize energy efficiency.

 

 

Fernando Rosas

I am a human who is curious about just too many things! I did one Bachelor on Music Composition, other in Mathematics and a Minor Degree on Philosophy. After that I did a Phd in Electrical Engineering, all this in the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile. Now I am working as a Postdoc in the KU Leuven University, in Belgium, working mostly on communication networks. My biggest interest is to understand how information flows in diverse context and situations. For example, I am really interested on the connection between Information Theory and Statistical Mechanics, where the idea of entropy plays a key role. One of my dreams would be to see one day an information-based non-equilibrium statistical mechanics discipline saying meaningful things about how living beings evolve in time. Other dream would be to see an information-theoretic foundation of machine learning, which could be eventualy connected with an out-of-equilibrium game theory.