Last modified: Thursday, December 4, 2008
IU Informatics Professor Alex Vespignani named a Fellow in the American Physical Society
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Dec. 4, 2008
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Indiana University Informatics Professor Alex Vespignani has been elected to fellowship in the American Physical Society, the preeminent organization of physicists in the United States. Vespignani was honored for his contribution to the statistical physics of complex networks, in particular his seminal work on the spreading of viruses in real networks.
"This honor represents a lifetime of achievement for a physicist," said Informatics Dean Bobby Schnabel. "We are proud of Alex for his noteworthy accomplishment, and feel fortunate to have him on our faculty of the School of Informatics."
Alessandro Vespignani
Vespignani obtained his Ph.D. in physics at the University of Rome La Sapienza. After holding research positions at Yale University and Leiden University, he joined the condensed matter research group at the International Center for Theoretical Physics (UNESCO) in Trieste, where he directed research and teaching activities for more than five years. Just prior to coming to IU, he worked at the French National Council for Scientific Research, carrying on his academic activities at the Laboratoire de Physique Theorique of the University of Paris-Sud.
He joined the School of Informatics faculty in 2004, and has been teaching and conducting research in the school's complex systems program since then. His recent research focuses on the study of epidemics, and includes a $1.2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop EpiC, a computational infrastructure supporting the study of biological and social contagion.
About the IU School of Informatics
Founded in 2000 as the first school of its kind in the United States, the Indiana University School of Informatics is dedicated to research and teaching across a broad range of computing and information technology, with emphases on science, applications, and societal implications. The school includes the Departments of Computer Science and Informatics on the Bloomington campus and Informatics on the IUPUI campus. The school administers a variety of bachelor and masters degree programs in computer science and informatics, as well as Ph.D. programs in computer science and the first-ever Ph.D. in informatics. The school is dedicated to excellence in education and research, to partnerships that bolster economic development and entrepreneurship, and to increasing opportunities for women and underrepresented minorities in computing and technology.
For more information, visit www.informatics.indiana.edu.
