CEU Department of Network and Data Science

02/10/2026

🤝 The way we interact shapes the way we cooperate.

Why does cooperation thrive in some groups and struggle in others?

In a new paper published in Physical Review E, Jaume Llabrés Rubio, Onkar Sadekar, Federico Malizia, and Federico Battiston explore how cooperation emerges when people interact in groups of different sizes.

The study shows that combining group sizes with different patterns of collective returns can generate alternative collective states: full cooperation or persistent coexistence between cooperators and free riders. The organization of groups and which individuals initially cooperate also play a key role in determining which collective state emerges.

📄 “Emergence of cooperation in nonlinear higher-order public goods games”
🔗 https://doi.org/10.1103/54zg-75zk

30/09/2026

Six new faces, a new chapter! Meet our incoming PhD cohort at CEU’s Department of Network and Data Science.

A warm welcome to our six new doctoral students! Pictured from left to right:

Standing: Sara Fürnkranz, Ester Cima, George Okello Ouma
Sitting: Giacomo Tittarelli, Ali Valiyev, Athul George

We’re delighted to have you join our community and look forward to the ideas, questions, and discoveries you’ll bring.

Wishing you a rewarding start to your doctoral studies—with inspiring conversations, fruitful collaborations, and good friendships along the way. 📚✨

Image credit: CEU / Daniel Vegel, VEGEL Photo Video

25/09/2026

🎓 Congratulations to Leonardo Rizzo on his PhD defense!

On September 4, Leonardo defended his dissertation, 𝗡𝗲𝘁𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸 𝗦𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗜𝗻𝗻𝗼𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗗𝘆𝗻𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗰𝘀, at CEU’s Department of Network and Data Science.

His research explores how network structures shape innovation, coordination, and selection across organizational, institutional, and evolutionary settings. Bringing together six articles, the dissertation combines empirical network analysis, agent-based computational modeling, and methodological work to study networks as both social structures and representations of innovation spaces.

The dissertation was supervised by János Kertész, with Mark Wittek chairing the committee and Leon Oerlemans (Tilburg University) and Guido Fioretti (University of Bologna) serving as external reviewers.

Congratulations, Leonardo, on this important milestone!

22/04/2026

Join us this Friday (April 24) at the 𝗟𝗼𝗻𝗴 𝗡𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵.

Elisa Omodei will present 𝘏𝘰𝘸 𝘋𝘰 𝘚𝘤𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘴 𝘜𝘴𝘦 𝘠𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘋𝘪𝘨𝘪𝘵𝘢𝘭 𝘍𝘰𝘰𝘵𝘱𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘚𝘵𝘶𝘥𝘺 𝘚𝘰𝘤𝘪𝘢𝘭 𝘐𝘴𝘴𝘶𝘦𝘴?, exploring how mobile phone and social media data can help uncover patterns in human behavior, inequality, and online polarization.

The talk takes place at Central European University in Vienna and is open to a wide audience.

Learn more:

Every call, location ping or post leaves a digital footprint—and these traces reveal more than habits. Mobile metadata helps track wildfire evacuations, identify vulnerable groups, and expose inequalities. Social media data maps how opinions spread, where polarization grows, and how communities en...