Supervisor: Professor Vito Latora
Project description:
Science and technology play a crucial role in our society and economy as they are the driving forces towards innovation, societal transformations and economic growth. The process through which scientists, inventors and entrepreneurs produce and exploit innovation are intimately related, and the vast amount of data available on scientific collaborations and on startup businesses offers today a unique opportunity to investigate in a quantitative and objective way creativity and success in large-scale innovation ecosystems.
The purpose of this PhD project is to integrate information from multiple data sources (such as Google Scholar, Web of Science, Cruchbase.com and Angelist.co) in order to map over time and across the entire world the interaction networks of scientists and entrepreneurs. We all know that creativity and success depend both on talent and experience, but also on communication, networking and access to knowledge and information. We will then measure and model quantitatively the extent to which the network of informal and formal relationships between people influences and determines creativity, the performance of a scientist, and inventor or of a startup, and the rise and fall of a scientific field or of an innovation ecosystem. The overall goal is to use digital data to design methodologies to guide and support innovation process systematically, to predict the success of a novel idea or a startup, and to finally reduce the intrinsic risk associated to innovation processes.
The perfect candidate will hold an MSc or an equivalent degree in applied mathematics, physics or engineering, and will have a good background in complex systems, network science, and experience with computer programming and numerical simulations.
References:- Network dynamics of innovation processes, Iacopini, Milojevic, Latora, Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 048301 (2018) - Interacting discovery processes on complex networks, Iacopini, Di Bona, Ubaldi, Loreto, Latora, Phys. Rev. Lett. 125, 2 48301 (2020) - The evolution of knowledge within and across fields in modern physics, Sun, Latora, Scientific Reports 10, 12097 (2020)- Interdisciplinary researchers attain better performance in funding, Sun, Livan, Ma, Latora, Commun Phys 4, 263 (2021) - Predicting success in the worldwide start-up network, Bonaventura, Ciotti, Panzarasa, Liverani, Lacasa, Latora, Scientific Reports 10, 345 (2020)- Quantifying and predicting success in show business, Williams, Lacasa, Latora, Nature Communications 10, 2256 (2019)- Anatomy of funded research in science, Ma, Mondragon, Latora, PNAS 112, 14760, 2015- Predicting urban innovation from the US Workforce Mobility Network, Bonaventura, Aiello, Quercia, Latora, Humanities and Social Sciences Comm. 8, 10 (2021)
Further information:
How to apply
Entry requirements
Fees and funding