network science

Models can predict how COVID-19 will spread. What goes into them, and how can we use what they tell us?

On Thursday, Joseph E. Aoun, president of Northeastern, will sit down for a conversation with Alessandro Vespignani, the director of Northeastern’s Network Science Institute, who is leading one of the major efforts to model this disease.

by Laura Castañón May 13, 2020

The coronavirus was in the US in January. We need to understand how we missed it.

SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, was circulating in major U.S. cities as early as January, says Alessandro Vespignani, director of Northeastern’s Network Science Institute. And if we want to keep our communities safe going forward, we need to understand how we missed a virus that was right under our noses.

by Laura Castañón April 26, 2020

Herd immunity won’t come anytime soon for COVID-19

Herd immunity is the idea that a disease can’t spread through a population once a large enough percentage is immune, either because they’ve recovered from an infection or received a vaccine. But that won’t work with SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, said Samuel Scarpino, an assistant professor who runs the Emergent Epidemics lab at Northeastern.

by Laura Castañón April 23, 2020

Network scientists identify 40 new drugs to test against COVID-19

Researchers at Northeastern mapped the way proteins within human cells behave after a cell is hijacked by the virus to find new and existing drugs that might be able to fight COVID-19. The team is now working with other experimental researchers to begin testing those drugs.

by Roberto Molar Candanosa April 2, 2020

One way to predict the spread of COVID-19? Follow the memes.

Network scientist Samuel Scarpino shows how epidemiologists can more comprehensively map infectious disease outbreaks, which follow the same complex spreading patterns as social trends.

by Emily Arntsen March 3, 2020

American democracy is a dumpster fire. We can still save it.

Northeastern professor David Lazer’s work in pioneering the new discipline of computational social science using network analysis, computational modeling, and field experiments has earned him the prestigious Klein Lectureship and a University Distinguished Professor appointment.

by Khalida Sarwari April 12, 2019

How to fix democracy in the United States

Using an experimental setup similar to that used by pharmaceutical companies, Northeastern professor David Lazer and his colleagues were looking for ways to solve some of the biggest issues threatening democracy in the U.S. At the 55th annual Robert D. Klein Lecture on Thursday, Lazer described what they found.

by Molly Callahan March 21, 2019

Think of a flea on a tightrope. You’re unravelling the nature of the universe.

Theoretical physicists at Northeastern have teamed up with network scientists to find a new way to examine the fundamental nature of our universe.

by Laura Castañón March 5, 2019

Forecasting diseases can help fight epidemics. But how accurate can these predictions be?

Ten different infectious diseases and 25 years of data later, Samuel Scarpino, an assistant professor in Northeastern’s Network Science Institute, has an answer.

by Laura Castañón February 28, 2019

What can 3D printing tell us about the human brain?

Researchers at Northeastern’s Center for Complex Network Research have developed a new model to study the properties of networks that exist in three-dimensional space.

by Laura Castañón November 28, 2018