Understanding complex physical systems requires knowledge of the interactions among their constituents, in order to be able to predict emergent behaviors (i.e., of the system as a whole). In the last few years, the same approach is being applied to the study of complex social systems, in an effort to gain insight on their behavior from a viewpoint that complements the traditional social sciences one. This kind of research involves a sensible combination of experimentation, data analysis and (agent-based) modeling. In this talk I will focus on the experimentation and data analysis aspects of this new computational social science, by presenting examples of work carried out in my group that make clear the influence of informational and social contexts on the interaction. In particular, I will study dynamic social networks, including the possibility of having a fake reputation; hierarchical social systems, where a comparison with non-human primates can be made, and classification of individual behaviors for later use in modeling and simulation. In this latter case, I will show how promising advances can be made towards a theory by identifying consistent behavior across social dilemmas.

About Anxo Sánchez

Prof. Angel Sánchez, PhD in Theoretical Physics (with distinction) from Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain, 1991. Fulbright postdoctoral fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory, USA, 1993-1994. Full professor of Applied Mathematics at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, where he founded the Interdisciplinary Group in Complex Systems (GISC, www.gisc.es) in 1996. Senior Researcher and member of the scientific Committee at Institute UC3M-BS for Financial Big Data. Associated Researcher at the Institute for Bio-computation and Physics of Complex Systems (BIFI), Universidad de Zaragoza. He has co-authored over 150 papers in prestigious international journals, receiving about 3500 citations (h=33), and he has been an invited speaker at about 50 national and international conferences. Responsible of 17 projects, with funding from the Spanish government, the Madrid regional government, NATO, ESF, FP7 and H2020 EU programs. Member of the Editorial Boards of Scientific Reports, PLOS ONE and Journal of Statistical Mechanics: Theory and Experiment. His research deals mostly with the applications of the physics of complex systems to social and biological sciences, and has contributed to the advancement of different fields ranging from economics to condensed matter physics through ecology and theoretical computer science.

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This event will be conducted in English