|Talks|

Complex contagions on higher-order networks: from social to biological systems

Past Talk
Guillaume St-Onge
Physics Ph.D. Candidate, Université Laval
Jun 9, 2021
11:00 am
Jun 9, 2021
11:00 am
In-person
4 Thomas More St
London E1W 1YW, UK
The Roux Institute
Room
100 Fore Street
Portland, ME 04101
Network Science Institute
2nd floor
Network Science Institute
11th floor
177 Huntington Ave
Boston, MA 02115
Network Science Institute
2nd floor
Room
58 St Katharine's Way
London E1W 1LP, UK

Talk recording

A recording of this talk can be viewed here. (The passcode is @7V8F&Xu)

How large a gathering is too large during the COVID-19 pandemic? Who influences social media discussions? To answer these questions, group interactions and complex mechanisms of influence must be taken into account. I will argue that complex (nonlinear) contagions on higher-order networks not only provide a novel perspective for the spreading of social phenomena, but it turns out to be a useful modeling approach for infectious diseases as well.

I will first introduce some of my works on group-based approximate master equations, showing how influential groups can be important to seed and sustain contagions, with important consequences on their control. I will then present a model of communicable diseases that can be reduced to a complex contagion on higher-order networks. This suggests that reinforcement mechanisms, typically associated with the spreading of social phenomena, should be included in biological contagions. With this perspective, we embrace a broader phenomenology for infectious diseases, allowing, for instance, the onset of superexponential spread.

About the speaker
Guillaume St-Onge is a Ph.D. candidate in physics at Université Laval in Québec, working with Prof. Antoine Allard (Université Laval) and Prof. Laurent Hébert-Dufresne (University of Vermont). Guillaume's research broadly relates to dynamical systems, complex networks, inference problems, and the design of efficient computational approaches. His thesis (in preparation) examines how group structure and complex mechanisms shape contagion processes on networks. Guillaume received a BSc and an MSc in physics from Université Laval.
Share this page:
Jun 09, 2021