Research Seminar | Gourab Ghoshal: The Physics of Urban Systems: Structure, Movement and Collective Dynamics
The Center for Urban Science + Progress (CUSP) and the Department of Technology Management and Innovation at NYU Tandon welcomes you to attend a research seminar by Gourab Ghoshal, professor of physics and astronomy with a joint appointment in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Rochester. This event will be held in Room 1201, located on the 12th Floor of 370 Jay Street.
About the Lecture
Cities are complex systems in which infrastructure, human movement, and social interactions combine to produce large-scale collective patterns. Their increasing scale and the availability of high-resolution data have made it possible to study these patterns using ideas and methods from statistical physics, network science, and nonlinear dynamics. In this talk, I will introduce some of these approaches and illustrate what they can tell us about urban systems. I will discuss examples ranging from scaling and the spatial organization of infrastructure to human mobility, epidemic spreading, predictability, and spatial pattern formation. Together, these examples show how relatively simple models, combined with large-scale data, can help connect individual behavior and local interactions to the collective organization and dynamics of cities.
About the Speaker
Gourab Ghoshal is Professor of Physics and Astronomy with a joint appointment in the department of Computer Science. He was previously at Harvard University, where he was a Research Scientist at the department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and a member of Harvard's multidisciplinary Orgins of Life initiative.
Hailing from New Delhi, India, Professor Ghoshal got his bachelor's and master's degree at the University of London, UK (BS and MSc in theoretical Physics, 2004). He did his doctoral-thesis work at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (PhD in Physics, 2009) during which he attended the prestigious Complex Systems summer school at the Santa Fe Institute, NM and the Theoretical Physics school at Les Houches near Chamonix in France. Following his PhD, he was a postdoctoral scientist jointly at Northeastern University and Harvard Medical School as well as a visiting scientist at the Media Lab, MIT.
Visitor Information
This event will be held in Room 1201 at 370 Jay St. Please visit the NYU Tandon website for directions and a campus map. Advance registration through Luma is required for campus access at NYU for external guests.
About the Urban Science Research Seminar Series
The Center for Urban Science + Progress’s annual Research Seminar series features leading voices in the growing field of urban informatics examining real-world challenges facing cities and urban environments around the world.