Laurent Hébert-Dufresne

🐒🕸️ 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/

For those of you at #SIAMDS25 in Denver, come check out @lhd.bsky.social and my Minitutorial! We'll be covering higher-order networks: when to use them, how to model dynamics with them, and how to implement with open-source software. Don't miss it! Details here: meetings.siam.org/sess/dsp_pro...

Hear me discuss our new paper written with the inimitable Laurent Hébert-Dufresne and colleagues! @lhd.bsky.social #Complexity #Physiology #Governance www.nature.com/articles/s44...

We’re hiring two postdocs at UC Davis and Cornell for research on collective intelligence and creativity. This project will use large-scale online experiments to study how groups become smarter and more creative through self-governance. ⅓

On this day in 2023, the Vermont Complex Systems Institute (vermontcomplexsystems.org), TGIR Center (www.med.uvm.edu/tgircobre/home) & @sfiscience.bsky.social joined for an event on interacting contagions

Our work, "One pathogen does not an epidemic make," is now online: arxiv.org/abs/2504.15053

This paper is now published. www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Ties that bind! Such a cool study.

Just your occasional reminder that NetSci-X will be hosted in Auckland in February 2026. Full CfP now on our conference website: netscix2026.github.io This is your chance to meet the network science community and visit Aotearoa New Zealand. 🧪 #networkscience #complexsystems

Former SFI External Professor Sander Bais's recent quantum trilogy, "The Power of the Invisible: The Quantessence of Reality,” via @amsterdamupress.bsky.social is a coffee-table-worthy review of classical physics, quantum mechanics, and complex systems. 

santafe.edu/news-center/new...

Networks, snow, tea, hot wine, science in an old monastery, friends in beautiful Québec City... What's not to love?!

We're looking for new friends and participants for the Complex Network Winter Workshop (CNWW) 2025. Follow the post for details and application link.

🚨 Job alert! 🚨 We're hiring three postdoctoral fellows to model AN ENTIRE COUNTRY as a complex system 🧪 → www.tepunahamatatini.ac.nz/2025/03/07/p...

That's amazing news. Congratulations!

cover of my new book everything is tuberculosis: the history and persistence of our deadliest infection

Everything Is Tuberculosis comes out THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW. I am so excited and also nervous. I hope you like it. Preorder your signed copy at everythingistb.com

New paper alert! Check it out if you want to know more about the distinguishability of simple and complex contagion processes at the individual level! Great collaboration with @elsaandres @gregodor @iaciac.bsky.social. www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Soon, soon, Zoom. Join us for the next NetSci colloquium with the eminent Mirta Galesic. Feb. 26, 2025, 10 AM ET.

Sign up at this link: iu.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Pandemic monitoring with global aircraft-based wastewater surveillance networks - Nature Medicine By simulating the implementation of airport-based wastewater surveillance sites at the global level, a modeling study shows how this early warning system would perform in identifying sources of pandem...

Wastewater from airplane toilets?
We introduce a global Aircraft-Based Wastewater Surveillance Network (WWSN) for pandemic monitoring in Nature Medicine 🔗 doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Aircraft-based wastewater surveillance allows for real-time, non-invasive monitoring of global pathogen spread
Short 🧵

Understanding artists’ perspectives on generative AI art and transparency, ownership, and fairness - ΑΙhub

Great blog post from @juniperlov.bsky.social, Julia Zimmerman, and Jennifer Karson about their recent study surveying artists on their opinions of the utility and threat of generative AI

Screenshot shows three papers connecting into a paper on the low-rank hypothesis of complex systems connecting to a neural network and collage of pictures of plants and animals

What do the predictability limits of epidemics have to do with limits on our us of AI study biology?

Tomorrow at 9am in Indore (1030pm today in Boston), I'm going to try and connect these dots during my #netscix2025 keynote lecture.

Tune into the live feed here: www.youtube.com/live/frY8luh...