Mr Gabriele Di Bona

Profile

Research Supervisors - Vito Latora, Lucas Lacasa, Vittorio Loreto.

Research Keywords - Complex networks, Big Data analysis, Agent based modelling, Innovation processes, Random walks, Computational social sciences, Knowledge evolution.

Project Title - The social components of innovation: from data analysis to mathematical modelling.

Project Description - My current research interests cover several aspects of complex networks, with a special focus on innovation dynamics and its applications.
In my main Ph.D. project I have studied some often overlooked mechanisms behind the emergence of novelties in different contexts, from music and language to technology and science. Indeed, little was known about the effect of social interaction or recombination of existing material on the exploration and discovery dynamics. 
Through extensive analyses of empirical data and model simulations, I have found that in a collaborative context a more central position in the social network enhances one's discovery possibilities, while in other situations people tend to cluster according to their propensity to explore.
I have also introduced a new framework and new measures to characterize the appearance of combinations of elements in such processes, showing the inadequacy of previous models to capture this phenomenon.

Other Research Interests - I am also working on a number of different applications of complex networks to other fields, like hyperbrain network analysis in controlled experiments to test social effects on creativity with Dr. C. Luft, as well as a new algorithm applied to the gene regulatory network of cancer cells with Prof. S. Bicciato. I have also used higher-order methods to understand the evolution of blockchain and the meaning of decentralization in the scientific landscape with Dr. A. Barronchelli and Dr. N. Perra. Finally, on a more theorethical side, I have applied large deviations theory to find a fully-local maximum entropy random walk with Dr. Francesco Coghi.

Public Engagement - Since early 2021, I am co-founder and organiser of NetPLACE (Networks, PhD Life and ComplExity), a series of seminars for early-career researchers in Complex Systems and Networks. These seminars are intended to provide a friendly place for CSN students from all over the world to interact and to present new/interesting developments from their areas of interest in the complex systems and networks field, while also talking about the difficulties encountered doing their research and raising awareness in the community.
I have also been co-founder and organiser between 2020 and 20222 of a series of international seminars for graduate maths students, the GIM Seminars. 15 PhD students, including me, have contributed to the organization of GIMs, collecting 28 speakers from 16 different universities, with the number of attendees in the audience between 15 and 40 people, reaching out to more than 150 PhD students from all over the world.
I have also continued to be in the organization of TEDxCatania, even from far away, leading the event management team, made of 10 volunteers, responsible to organise every year many local events for ideas worth spreading.
Finally, in 2020-2021 I have been organiser of an internal series of seminars in my department at QMUL, QuiPS, ending up with 22 seminars and 28 speakers. Similarly, in 2022 I have participated at the organization of Pint of Science UK.

Education - Before joining Queen Mary, I have studied mathematics at the University of Catania, Italy (both BSc and MSc), with a focus on applications.
I was also a student of the "Scuola Superiore di Catania", a public institution that provides university students with advanced additional courses and parallel research.
During the MSc, I have worked as a trainee in the Creativity team at Sony Computer Science Laboratories in Paris under the supervision of Prof. Vittorio Loreto, to analyse and model music exploration data from Last.fm. 

Get in contact - If you have any idea (good or bad it doesn't matter), do not hesitate to contact me!!! Email me at g.dibona@qmul.ac.uk, or follow me on Twitter: @gabridibo.

(Last update on 02-Feb-2023.)

Teaching

AY 2022/2023 - Semester 2

• Demonstrator - ECS660U/ECS7008U/ECS7008P - Modelling and Performance - @QMUL

AY 2021/2022 - Semester 2

• Demonstrator - ECS660U/ECS7008P - Modelling and Performance - @QMUL
• TA - MTH6142 - Complex Networks - @QMUL

AY 2020/2021 - Semester 2

• TA - MTH4115/MTH4215 - Vectors and Matrices - @QMUL
• TA - MTH4116/MTH4216 - Probability and Statistics I - @QMUL
• TA - MTH6142 - Complex Networks - @QMUL

AY 2020/2021 - Semester 1

• TA - MTH4100 - Calculus I - @QMUL.
• TA - MTH4107 - Introduction to Probability - @QMUL
• TA - MTH6141 - Random Processes - @QMUL

AY 2019/2020 - Semester 2

• Demonstrator - MTH5125 - Actuarial Mathematics II - @QMUL.
• Demonstrator - MTH5126 - Statistics for Insurance - @QMUL.

Research

Publications

• Gabriele Di Bona, Leonardo Di Gaetano, Vito Latora, and Francesco Coghi. "Maximal dispersion of adaptive random walks." In: Physical Review Research 4 (2022), p. L042051. Code is available on Github.
  
• Caroline Luft, Ioanna Zioga, Anastasios Giannopoulos, Gabriele Di Bona, Andrea Civilini, Vito Latora, and Isabelle Mareschal. "Social synchronisation of brain activity increases during eye-contact." In: Communications Biology volume 5, Article number: 412 (2022). Data and code are available on OSF. 
• Gabriele Di Bona, Enrico Ubaldi, Iacopo Iacopini, Bernardo Monechi, Vito Latora, and Vittorio Loreto. "Social interactions affect discovery processes." In: arXiv preprint arXiv:2202.05099 (2022). Data is available on Figshare. Code available under request to the corresponding author. 
• Gabriele Di Bona*, Alberto Bracci*, Nicola Perra, Vito Latora, and Andrea Baronchelli. "The decentralized evolution of decentralization across fields: from Governance to Blockchain". In: arXiv:2207.14260 (2022). Code is available on Github.
• Gabriele Di Bona, Iacopo Iacopini, Angelo Petralia, and Vito Latora. "Novelties as associations:
  higher-order Heaps’ laws". In preparation (soon on arXiv).
• Gabriele Di Bona, and Andrea Giacobbe. "A Simple Theoretical Model for Lags and Asymmetries of Surface Temperature." In: Climate 9.5 (2021): 78. Code is available on Notebook Archive.
• Iacopo Iacopini*, Gabriele Di Bona*, Enrico Ubaldi, Vittorio Loreto, and Vito Latora. "Interacting discovery processes on complex networks." In: Physical Review Letters 125, no. 24 (2020): 248301. Code is available on Github. Check also the Nature research highlight about our article. 

*Co-first author.

Public Engagement

Organization of events

• NetPLACE seminars (2021-Present), Networks, PhD Life And ComplExity seminars.
• Pint of Science (2022).
• GIM seminars (2020-2022), Graduate Inter-university Math Seminars. 
• QuIPS (2020-2021), Queen Mary Internal Postgraduate Seminar.
• TEDxSSC and TEDxCatania (2017-2022). 

Conference talks

• CompleNet 2023 (25th–28th April, 2023, Aveiro, Portugal).
• Complex Networks 2022 (8th November, 2022, Palermo, Italy).
• CCS 2022 (18th October, 2022, Palma de Mallorca, Spain).
• NetSci 2022 (29th July, 2022, Shanghai-Online, China).
• UoR SIAM-IMA Student Chapter Conference (4th July, 2022, University of Reading, United Kingdom). Awarded best talk prize.
• Data Natives 2022 (6th May 2022, City University of London, United Kingdom).
• Networks 2021 (5th July, 2021, Online).
• CompleNet Live 2021 (24th May 2021, Online).
• NetSci 2020 (24th September 2020, Rome-Online, Italy).

Other seminar and workshop talks

• YrCSS Warm-up 2022.
• SIAM Workshop on Network Science.
• Graduate Interuniversity Math Seminars.
• Queen Mary Internal Postgraduate Seminar.
• 2nd CISAS Biomathematics Workshop.
• Mediterranean School of Complex Networks.