Events Calendar

Control of Spreading Processes on Networks

Speaker: Cameron Nowzari, University of Pennsylvania

Talk Title: Control of Spreading Processes on Networks

Abstract: The prevalence of social networks, robotic networks, power systems, and the Internet of Things today necessitates the development of a new interdisciplinary science catered to studying these complex networks. Some of the fundamental problems that can benefit from such a science include consensus, distributed estimation and control, and network and topology design. In this talk, we focus on the analysis and control of various spreading processes. The spreading of a disease through a population, the adoption of an idea or rumor through a social network, the consumption of a product in a marketplace, or the risk of receiving a computer virus through the world wide web are all prevalent examples of spreading processes we encounter every day. With the vast amount of application areas, it is no surprise that we have seen a recent surge of interest in these problems and the area of Network Science in general.

One of the most popular models of spreading processes is the Susceptible-Infected-Susceptible (SIS) model. Although a plethora of variations to the SIS model have been studied and analyzed by mathematicians, physicists, computer scientists, and biologists for over a century, there is still a severe lack in understanding how to effectively control these systems. With the freshly renewed interest in this topic, control engineers have only recently entered the scene and have a lot to offer. Focusing on the application of a disease spreading through a population, such as ebola or measles, we will look at how to best minimize the chance of it becoming an epidemic. We formulate the problem for a much more general model than the SIS model and propose an optimization framework that allows us to solve it efficiently.


Biography: : Cameron Nowzari received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara in June 2009. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. in Engineering Sciences from the University of California, San Diego in December 2010 and September 2013, respectively. He is currently working as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Pennsylvania. His research interests include dynamical systems and control, sensor networks, distributed coordination algorithms, optimization, robotics, event- and self-triggered control, Markov processes, and spreading processes. He was a finalist for the Best Student Paper Award at the 2011 American Control Conference and received the 2012 O. Hugo Schuck Best Paper Award in the Theory category for his work on distributed self-triggered coordination of mobile robotic networks.

Host: Urbashi Mitra, ubli@usc.edu, EEB 536, x04667

Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Gerrielyn Ramos