Tackling
Complexity in Natural, Biological and Socio-technical Systems

The Complex Systems and Networks Lab is headed by Prof. Yamir Moreno. The Lab is part of the Institute for Biocomputation and Physics of Complex Systems (BIFI) at the University of Zaragoza. The core of our research activity is aimed at investigating the laws governing the structure and dynamics of complex networked systems. We are actively researching on subjects such as: Epidemic spreading, including interacting and multi-pathogen diseases, the epidemiology of TB transmission, the analysis of biological, economic and socio-technical systems, the use of Big Data, the foundations of multilayer networks and systems, the theoretical and experimental basis of evolutionary game dynamics and human collective phenomena (see our dedicated web-page at http://nectunt.bifi.es), the analysis of nonlinear dynamics on networked systems and, lately, on some problems within the Systems Biology’s domain. You will find more specific information about all the previous research lines in the different sections of our webpage.

The understanding of human collective phenomena is of paramount scientific and technological importance. The colossal amount of digital data (Big Data) nowadays available is revolutionizing the way we study these phenomena. On its turn, new methods to efficiently deal with the data are called for. In Cosnet, we study the emergence and evolution of large-scale human behavior, the structure and dynamics of online social networks, and several kinds of diffusion processes on social systems.

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Understanding and predicting how diseases unfold and evolve is a long-standing research challenge. We aim at developing more accurate models to tackle the latter problem. To this purpose, we collect data from different sources, investigate on how to make classical epidemiological models more sophisticated and detailed and develop new theoretical and computational frameworks to deal with multi-scale diseases. Finally, a central point of our research agenda is the modeling of TB spreading.

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Systems Biology is a powerful approach for a better understanding of the interplay between the structure and dynamics of biological systems. In this area, we mostly study the topology and functioning of regulatory networks. Additionally, one of our main goals is to deepen into the mechanisms that underlie and promote human cooperative behavior in different contexts through experimentation. From a theoretical point of view, we address this problem using evolutionary game dynamics.

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This area is devoted to the study of several dynamical processes, mainly from a modeling perspective. For many years, we have studied network structure, as well as critical and synchronization phenomena and we continue to research on these topics. However, we are now more concentrated on the computational and theoretical study of so-called multilevel systems, which are made up by several layers each one representing a different topological instance of the system being modeled.

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Y. Moreno has been elected the President of the Network Science Society for the next 3 years.
COSNET Lab actively participated in NetSci 2018 in Paris, with contributions form S. Arregui. A. Czaplicka, C. Payrato, and Y. Moreno, who was the PC Chair of this NetSci Edition.
Prof. Francisco A Rodrigues, from USP at Sao Carlos, will be visiting COSNET Lab for two weeks.
Two Master Students, Francesca Priante from Università di Padova and Emmanuel Artiges from École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, will spend the next 4 months at COSNET to carry out their final master projects.
COSNET Lab organized the BIFI International Conference 2018 on Complexity, Networks and Collective Behaviour. For more information, please check the Conference Web Page.
Dr. Thomas Peron, from USP at Sao Carlos, will be at COSNET Lab for the next month to carry out joint research with Prof. Yamir Moreno.
Kleber Oliveira, from the University of Campinas, joins COSNET Lab for the next three months to carry out research works for his MSc Thesis under the direction of Prof. Yamir Moreno.
Dr. Xiangrong Wang, from University of Delft, will be at COSNET Lab for the next 3 months to carry out joint research with Prof. Yamir Moreno.
Dan Lu, our new Ph.D student joins COSNET Lab. She will work under the supervision of Prof. Yamir Moreno for the next years to carry out her PhD Thesis.
Pablo Piedrahita, supervised by Prof. Yamir Moreno and Dr. Javier Borge-Holthoefer, a former member of COSNET Lab, successfully defended his PhD Thesis.
Prof. Yamir Moreno is appointed External Faculty of the Complexity Science Hub Vienna, Austria.
Claudia Payrato, from University of Cergy-Pontoise and co-advised by Prof. Yamir Moreno, will be at COSNET Lab for the next 3 months to carry out part of her PhD work.
Ana Lucia Schmidt, from IMT Lucca, joins COSNET Lab for the next 6 months to finalice her PhD Thesis collaborating with group’s members.
Dr. Agnieszka Czaplicka joins COSNET Lab as postdoctoral fellow. She comes from IFISC Mallorca to work on complexity in social and ecological systems.
Ana Paula dos Reis Lima, from USP Sao Carlos, will be spending 3 months at COSNET Lab to work on her graduation Thesis.
Felipe Maciel Cardoso joins COSNET Lab to do his PhD Thesis with us.
COSNET Lab actively participated in the Conference on Complex Systems (CCS2016) in Amsterdam, with contributions of A. Aleta, S. Arregui. G. F. de Arruda, E. Cozzo, C. Gracia-Lazaro, and Y. Moreno.
The paper “La Física del Comportamiento Humano” (The Physics of Human Behavior, by R. A. Baños, C. Gracia-Lazaro & Y. Moreno), has been selected as the best research paper published in the journals of the Spanish Royal Society of Physics.
Emanuele Cozzo is awarded with the PhD degree in Physics (Summa Cum Laude) after successfully defending his PhD Thesis on February 2nd, 2016.
Alberto Aleta, PhD student at COSNET, won an FPI Fellowship to support his PhD studies.
Prof. Yamir Moreno has been elected President of the Complex Systems Society. His mandate is for 3 years.
Prof. Yamir Moreno has been designated as Vice-president of the Network Science Society.
Sergio Arregui participated in the CCS 2015, in Arizona, USA.
NetSci 2015, whose chairman was Prof. Yamir Moreno, was successfully celebrated in Zaragoza with a record-breaking participation of 593 participants.
Prof. Yamir Moreno is appointed BIFI’s Deputy Director.
Cosnet Lab participates in the new European Project DOLFINS (GSS call, coordinated by University of Zurich). The kick-off meeting will take place in mid March.
Cosnet Lab organizes the next edition of NetSci 2015 in Zaragoza. The Calls for Satellites and Abstracts are now open. For more information, please check the Conference Web Page.
PhD Student Joaquin Sanz successfully defended his PhD Thesis.
Prof. Yamir Moreno becomes a PRL Divisional Associate Editor.
Cosnet Lab members participated in the European Conference on Complex Systems (ECCS) in Lucca, Italy.
PhD Student Raquel Alvarez-Baños successfully defended her PhD Thesis.
Cosnet Lab together with our collaborators from UC3M launched the dedicated web page Nectunt, in which we will report all our work on evolutionary game theory and in particular, our experiments with humans playing social dilemmas.
Dr. Carlos Gracia-lazaro, now in Cosnet, received the distinction “Extraordinary Doctorate Award” by the University of Zaragoza.
Prof. Yamir Moreno, gave a seminar at the School of Mathematics, University of Southampton, U.K. on the topic of Contagion Dynamics.
Dr. Carlos Gracia-Lazaro joins the group as a Post-doctoral fellow.
Prof. Yamir Moreno, elected Vice-president secretary of the Complex Systems Society.
Both FP7 Projects in which Cosnet is involved were evaluated with the highest mark (excellent progress) at the annual review meetings.
Prof. Yamir Moreno becomes member of the FET Advisory Group of the EC for the H2020 Framework.
Prof. Yamir Moreno received the ISI Fellows award from the ISI Foundation, Turin, Italy. The ceremony took place on June 27th followed by the conference “The Being of Science” in which all ISI Fellows shared their vision with the public.

Dr. Sandro Meloni delivered an invited talk at the Workshop “Complexity in Social Systems: from data to models“, University of Cergy-Pontoise, Paris.
Dr. Yamir Moreno taught the course “Networks: Structure and Diffusion Dynamics at the Summer School “Emergent Dynamics of Discrete & Stochastic Multiscale Systems: analysis & simulation“, TU Eindhoven, The Netherlands.
Dr. Yamir Moreno delivered an invited talk at the Workshop “Uncertainty in Interactions Networks” at Bath University, UK.
Dr. Yamir Moreno joins the Board of the NetSci Society.
The next European Edition of NetSci, in 2015, will be held in Zaragoza organized by our group.
Dr. Yamir Moreno joins the Advisory Board of the WHO Collaborative Center initiative “Complexity Sciences for Health Systems” (CS4HS), which is based on the Division of Mathematical Modeling at the University of British Columbia Centre for Disease Control, in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
COSNET members Dr. Sandro Meloni and Dr. Yamir Moreno will co-organize a Satellite Meeting at the European Conference on Complex Systems 2013 (ECCS2013), to be held in Barcelona from September 16 to September 20, 2013.
New paper in Physical Review Letters [“Diffusion dynamics on multiplex networks”, PRL 110, 028701 (2013)] by COSNET members. Check it out in Publications.
Dr. Carlos Gracia-Lázaro successfully defended his Ph.D Thesis entitled “Dynamics and Collective Phenomena of Social Systems” under the supervision of Prof. Luis M. Floría and Dr. Yamir Moreno. He will continue his work as a postdoc within COSNET.
The kick-off meeting of MULTIPLEX took place at IMT in Lucca, Italy. Joaquín Sanz, Dr. Sandro Meloni and PI Dr. Yamir Moreno attended the meeting.
Gripenet.es has been launched. This is a platform to monitor the evolution of influenza and is part of the European Consortium Influenzanet. Help us to spread the word!.
The kick-off meeting of PLEXMATH took place in Tarragona. Emanuele Cozzo, Dr. Javier Borge, Dr. Jesus Gómez and PI Dr. Yamir Moreno attended the meeting.