Workshop Keynote
Francesco Bullo
On the Mathematics of Wisdom of Crowds and Social Influence
Francesco Bullo is a Professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He received the Laurea degree “summa cum laude” in Electrical Engineering from the University of Padova, Italy, in 1994, and the Ph.D. degree in Control and Dynamical Systems from the California Institute of Technology in 1999. From 1998 to 2004, he was an Assistant Professor with the Coordinated Science Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Since 2004 he has been at University of California, Santa Barbara; he is currently affiliated with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, the Department of Computer Science, and the Center for Control, Dynamical Systems and Computation.
Professor Bullo's research focuses on modeling, dynamics and control of multi-agent network systems, with applications to robotic coordination, power systems, distributed computing and social networks. Previous work includes contributions to geometric control, Lagrangian systems, vehicle routing, and motion planning. Professor Bullo has published more than 300+ papers in international journals, books, and refereed conferences. He is the coauthor, with Andrew D. Lewis, of the book “Geometric Control of Mechanical Systems” (Springer, 2004, 0-387-22195-6), with Jorge Cortés and Sonia Martínez, of the book “Distributed Control of Robotic Networks” (Princeton, 2009, 978-0-691-14195-4), with Stephen L. Smith of the book “Lectures on Robotics Planning and Kinematics” (SIAM, 2019, under contract); and of the book “Lectures on Network Systems” (Kindle Direct Publishing, 2022, v1.6, 978-1986425643).
Professor Bullo is a Fellow of IEEE, IFAC, and SIAM. He was a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Control Systems Society for 2016-18. He received the 2018 Distinguished Scientist Award by the Chinese Academy of Sciences. His articles received the 2008 CSM Outstanding Paper Award from IEEE CSS, the 2011 Hugo Schuck Best Paper Award from AACC, the 2013 SIAG/CST Best Paper Prize from SIAM, the 2014 Automatica Best Paper Prize from IFAC, the 2016 Guillemin-Cauer Best Paper Award from IEEE CAS, and the 2016 TCNS Outstanding Paper Award from IEEE CSS. Professor Bullo served as advisor or co-advisor of 26 graduated PhD students. He received the 2015 UCSB Outstanding Graduate Mentor Award and the 2004 UIUC COE Outstanding Advisor Award. His students’ papers were finalists for the Best Student Paper Award at the IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (2002, 2005, 2007), and the American Control Conference (2005, 2006, 2010).
Professor Bullo has served the IEEE Control Systems Society in various roles: as President Elect / President / President Past during the triennium 2017–2019, as 2011-2012 Vice-President for Technical Activities, as 2013-2014 Vice-President for Publications, as 2007-2009 Elected Member of the Board of Governors, and as Program Chair for the 2016 IEEE Conference in Decision and Control. Additionally, he served as Chair of the SIAM Activity Group on Control and Systems Theory, for 2020-2021. Finally, he served on the Editorial Boards of IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, ESAIM: Control, Optimization, and the Calculus of Variations, SIAM Journal of Control and Optimization, and Mathematics of Control, Signals, and Systems.
From July 2013 to June 2017, Professor Bullo served as Mechanical Engineering Department Chair at UCSB. In this role he had responsibilities over academic personnel matters, educational programs, facilities management, governance, finances, and communication/development.
Panel I:
Modeling Social Info-Dynamics: A Research Roadmap
Tarek Abdelzaher (Moderator): Abdelzaher (Ph.D., UMich, 1999) is a Sohaib and Sara Abbasi Professor of CS and Willett Faculty Scholar (UIUC), with over 300 refereed publications in Real-time Computing, Distributed Systems, Sensor Networks, and IoT. He served as Editor-in-Chief of J. Real-Time Systems for 20 years, an AE of IEEE TMC, IEEE TPDS, ACM ToSN, ACM TIoT, and ACM ToIT, among others, and chair of multiple top conferences in his field. Abdelzaher received the IEEE Outstanding Technical Achievement and Leadership Award in Real-time Systems (2012), a Xerox Research Award (2011), and several best paper awards. He is a fellow of IEEE and ACM.
Jean-Luc Cambier: 2 PhDs, J Civ USAF AFMC AFRL/RZSA is a theoretical physicist and an internationally recognized expert in the design of innovative propulsion systems and computational physics.
Mark Finlayson: Dr. Mark A. Finlayson is an Eminent Scholar Chaired Associate Professor of Computer Science in the Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences at Florida International University (FIU). He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science and Cognitive Science from MIT in 2012 under the supervision of Patrick H. Winston. He also received his M.S. from MIT in 2001 and his B.S. from the University of Michigan in 1998, both in Electrical Engineering. Before joining SCIS he was a Research Scientist in MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) for 2½ years. His research focuses on representing, extracting, and using higher-order semantic patterns in natural language, especially focusing on narrative. His work intersects artificial intelligence, computational linguistics, and cognitive science. He directs the Cognac Laboratory (The Cognition, Language, and Culture lab), whose members focus on investigating the science of narrative from a computational point of view. His research has been funded by the NSF, NIH, DARPA, OSD, ONR, DHS, and IBM. He was the recipient of an NSF CAREER Award in 2018 and an IBM Faculty Award in 2019. He was named Edison Fellow for Artificial Intelligence for 2019-2021 at the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). He has received multiple teaching awards at FIU, plus an FIU faculty award for research and creative activities in 2019.
Robert Ghrist: Robert Ghrist (Ph.D., Cornell, Applied Mathematics, 1995) is the Andrea Mitchell PIK Professor of Mathematics and Electrical & Systems Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a recognized leader in the field of Applied Algebraic Topology, working in sensor networks, robotics, signal processing, data analysis, optimization, and more. He is an award-winning researcher, teacher, and expositor of Mathematics and its applications. In his spare time, he enjoys animation and video production.
Sorin Adam Matei: College of Liberal Arts Associated Dean of Research and Graduate Education and Professor of Communication, Brian Lamb School of Communication - studies the relationship between information technology, group behavior, and social structures in a variety of contexts. His most recent book, Structural Differentiation in Social Media studied 10 years-worth of Wikipedia editing or 250 million individual contributions to the site. The volume offers a new view on how online groups emerge. It identifies specific evolutionary phases, including a bureaucratic one. The book emphasizes the role of strong although temporary leaders for the success of any online project. His research also investigates the role played by social media cognition and emotional responses on risk-prone or risk-averse behavior in natural emergencies. He is also known for his work on ethics in big data and for his multidisciplinary, international projects, such as EUNOMIA, recently awarded a 2,900,000 Euro grant by the European Union Horizon 2020 program and Kredible.Net ([http://kredible.net) previously funded by the National Science Foundation. Dr. Matei leads the Global Communication Study Abroad program organized with support experts from the French National Assembly and from the French Superior Council for Audio-Visual Media (FCC equivalent).
Panel II:
Social and Cognitive Basis for Information Dynamics
Ivan Garibay (Moderator): Technology innovator, associate professor, artificial intelligence and complex adaptive systems expert focused on computational models for social and economic complexity and technologies for learning. Innovation ecosystems builder, entrepreneurship educator (LLP/I-Corps) and occasional political commentator.
Kathleen Carley: Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon and the director of the Center for Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems (CASOS). Kathleen M. Carley's research areas are dynamic network analysis, computational social and organization theory, adaptation and evolution, text mining, and the impact of telecommunication technologies and policy on communication, information diffusion, disease contagion and response within and among groups particularly in disaster or crisis situations.
Brian Kettler: Brian Kettler joined DARPA in March 2019. His research interests include automated decision support (AI reasoning and planning), computational modeling of sociocultural systems, human-machine collaboration, and context-aware computing.
Michael Macy: Goldwin Smith Professor of Arts and Sciences and Director of the Social Dynamics Laboratory at Cornell, where he has worked since 1997. With support from the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, and Google, his research team has used computational models, online laboratory experiments, and digital traces of device-mediated interaction to explore familiar but enigmatic social patterns, such as circadian rhythms, the emergence and collapse of fads, the spread of self-destructive behaviors, cooperation in social dilemmas, the critical mass in collective action, the spread of high-threshold contagions on small-world networks, the polarization of opinion, segregation of neighborhoods, and assimilation of minority cultures.
Bartlett Russell: Dr. Bartlett Russell joined DARPA as a program manager in April of 2019. Her work focuses on understanding the variability of human cognitive and social behavior to enable the decision-maker, improve analytics, and generate autonomous and AI systems that enable human adaptability. Prior to joining DARPA, Russell was a senior program manager and lead of the human systems and autonomy research area in Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Technology Laboratories. There she led a thirty-person team and a $30 million research portfolio to develop systems that assessed and adapted to the human user’s need. Before Lockheed, she conducted field and lab work examining the effect of stress on cognition, and spent more than 10 years examining the implications of biotechnological developments on military competitions. Russell received her doctorate in neuroscience and cognitive science from the University of Maryland, College Park; her master’s degree in security studies from Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service; and her bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University.