Laurent Hébert-Dufresne

📢 Keynotes unlocked: 5/12. Thrilled to have Laurent Hébert-Dufresne @lhd.bsky.social as a keynote speaker in Complenet’26! Join us to learn more about #networks and #dynamics!
🌐 Info & registration: complenet.weeblysite.com
🚨 Call for contributions open – submit by Nov 15, 2025!

Next CoCo seminar on October 1st by Juniper Lovato from the University of Vermont!

In 2016 Geoffrey Hinton said “we should stop training radiologists now" since AI would soon be better at their jobs.

He was right: models have outperformed radiologists on benchmarks for ~a decade.

Yet radiology jobs are at record highs, with an average salary of $520k.

Why?

Final week to apply for the 2026 SFI Complexity Postdoctoral Fellowships

If you're an early-career scholar and passionate about collaborative, transdisciplinary research beyond traditional departments, this is the postdoc fellowship for you.

Deadline: Oct 1, 2025

Apply: santafe.edu/sfifellowship

Very cool interactive story, @jstonge.bsky.social!

"[...] real social cascades aren't simply branching processes with fixed rules." A self-reinforcing mechanism is what we propose in a recent piece led by the one and only @lhd.bsky.social.

📢 Excited to announce CompleNet 2026! Join us to share your network science research in a highly interdisciplinary conference!

🗓️ 4–8 May 2026 | 📍 Zaragoza, Spain 🇪🇸
🚨 Call for contributions open – submit by Nov 15, 2025!
🌐 Info & registration: complenet.weeblysite.com

The interactive story is by @jstonge.bsky.social and other friends: complex-stories.uvm.edu/friends-funn....

The paper is with friends from @vcsi.bsky.social @sfiscience.bsky.social and @unioflimerick.bsky.social.

Our Physical Review Letter looks at how to get power-law distributions of cascade size without tuning or self-organization to criticality by allowing cascades to improve in quality and jump over gaps or dead-ends

TL;DR complex-stories.uvm.edu/friends-funn...

Paper: journals.aps.org/prl/abstract...

🚨 Excited to share a new paper 📃, years in the making, with Zach Wood.

We propose that human evolution is characterized as an Evolutionary Transition in Inheritance and Individuality (ETII).

Explainer and OA paper below:

YouTube video by Watson College at Binghamton University CCS 2026 | Binghamton, N.Y., USA

Done! It was a super fun week of complexity. Huge thanks to the organizers! And see you all next year in Binghamton!!
#CCS2025 #CCS2026
youtu.be/kIK3DleA-Us

Excited to announce the Social Network Summer School 🇨🇱!
📅 Jan 12–16, 2026 | Santiago, Chile
Keynotes: @estebanmoro.bsky.social & @krivitsky.net

@insna.bsky.social & @netscisociety.bsky.social
Apply by Oct 5 👉 snlab-cl.github.io/summerschool/

🎓 I've joined the PhD in Complex Systems & Data Science at @vcsi.bsky.social to work w/ @lhd.bsky.social & @juniperlov.bsky.social to explore social (complex) dynamics

🔬 Huge thanks to @joanagsa.bsky.social & Lília Perfeito for helping me get ready for this chapter

🚀 Excited for this next step!

The beautiful venue of CCS 2025 in Siena, Italy.

Happy to be in beautiful Siena for the Conference on Complex Systems. We are partnering with the organizers for a Collection in npj Complexity on "The Evolving Landscape of Complex Systems." #ccs2025

I'm excited to meet everyone to talk complexity!

Submit your work: www.nature.com/collections/...

Juniper Lovato is a Vermont Complex Systems Institute core faculty member and an outstanding thinker who has been critical to many of our most significant research efforts. Learn about what makes her…... Juniper Lovato is a Vermont Complex Systems Institute core faculty member and an outstanding thinker who has been critical to many of our most significant research efforts. Learn about what makes her ...

We love this research profile on Vermont Complex Systems Institute core faculty @juniperlov.bsky.social 🐙 www.linkedin.com/posts/uvm-vc...

Variations in climate change belief systems across 110 geographic areas - Nature Climate Change Climate beliefs do not exist in isolation but form an interconnected network known as a belief system. This study analyses the density and inconsistency of belief systems and their associations with informational and socioeconomic factors to inform effective climate change communication strategies.

A survey of >99k people (110 regions) shows the Global North has denser belief networks, while the Global South has looser connections

Inconsistency appears in areas (eg Mid East), where support for fossil fuels conflicts with support for renewables/climate policies

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

It might start as a joke, belief, or rumor, easy to dismiss. But then it twists, builds momentum, and spreads like wildfire. Why do some ideas die out while others go viral?

A new study by researchers from the University of Vermont and the Santa Fe Institute offers answers: santafe.edu/news

New job ad: Assistant Professor of Quantitative Social Science, Dartmouth College apply.interfolio.com/172357

Please share with your networks. I am the search chair and happy to answer questions!

🐒🕸️ New preprint! Confused about how to model animal social networks?

ASNA can be confusing—but also full of opportunity. We break down 5 common misunderstandings in animal social network analysis and share solutions from behavioural ecology, anthro, stats, & network science. Hope it helps!

A 🧵

Applications are open for SFI's 2026 Complexity Postdoctoral Fellowships

If you’ve recently earned a Ph.D. in any scientific field and want to pursue independent, transdisciplinary research, consider applying.

Deadline: October 1, 2025
Apply here: santafe.edu/sfifellowship

Excited that our #network data sharing recommendations have received a commendation from SIPS!

Read the recommendations 👉 www.zacharyneal.com/datasharing

Endorse the recommendations 👉 forms.gle/sgpjyUnkufJF...

That’s a wrap on IC2S2’25! 🎉 Thank you for an unforgettable week of ideas and discussions. Congratulations to our award winners, and safe travels home. Mark your calendars: #ic2s2 ’ 26 heads to Burlington, Vermont, in the US. See you next year!

Newish work from VCSI core and external team members: @lhd.bsky.social @juniperlov.bsky.social @jstonge.bsky.social @jgyou.bsky.social & @nwlandry.bsky.social 👀

🌐 We are glad to host 27 satellites at #CCS25, covering diverse and cutting-edge topics in complex systems science!
🔗Explore the full list here:
ccs25.cssociety.org/satellites-l...

What is SOCKS? | Vermont Complex Systems Institute What is SOCKS? We'd love to tell you more! Thanks to the Vermont EPSCoR team, we'll be sharing a series of videos about this National Science Foundation (NSF) funded project that is building c...

Hello, Bluesky! We're excited to relocate here from X. You can also follow us on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/posts/uvm-vc...

Defining and classifying models of groups: The social ontology of higher-order networks In complex systems research, the study of higher-order interactions has exploded in recent years. Researchers have formalized various types of group interactions, such as public goods games, biologica...

There's amazing work on group effects in higher-order networks, but not a lot of connections to social ontology, collective action, and group selection.

Led by @jstonge.bsky.social with expert guidance of @rharp.bsky.social we reviewed and formalized these connections.

arxiv.org/abs/2507.02758

Defining and classifying models of groups: The social ontology of higher-order networks In complex systems research, the study of higher-order interactions has exploded in recent years. Researchers have formalized various types of group interactions, such as public goods games, biologica...

Defining and classifying models of groups: The social ontology of higher-order networks arxiv.org/abs/2507.02758

A common narrative in the U.S. links a city’s political leanings with its level of racial bias. These assumptions are often too simple, suggests a new study by SFI's Andrew Stier and Brandon Ogbunu. Nearly 40% of cities analyzed do not conform to partisan expectations.

santafe.edu/news-center/...

1/5
In a comment published in NPJ Complexity, SFI @sfiscience.bsky.social post-doc Andrew Stier and I ask a critical question:

"What is the relationship between voting patterns in American cities and implicit racial bias?"

We find that the story is...complicated.
www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Characteristic scales and adaptation in higher-order contagions - Nature Communications People organize in groups and contagions spread across them, meanwhile groups can evolve as people adaptively move in response to the spread. Here, authors show how keeping key dynamical correlations ...

New work led by the great @giulioburgio.bsky.social.

A detailed math model to track correlations within and across groups in higher-order networks.

We also get to study adaptive hypergraphs, which self-organize as sparse or dense graphs to control a contagion.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Today is the deadline to let us know of your interest to participate in the Complex Networks Winter Workshop 2025.

Come join us for a week of science in a winter wonderland: old monastery, Québec city, the week before Christmas.

vermontcomplexsystems.org/events/cnww/