I am a graduate student in the Department of Physics at Emory University working with Dr. Stefan Boettcher. My research is directed to answering the question: How do long-range connections within hierarchical complex networks affect the phase behavior in statistical models? I use the renormalization group framework and Monte Carlo simulations to investigate the statistical properties of hierarchical Hanoi networks.
The renormalization group is a relatively simple concept that merely examines an indivisible microscopic view of a system and telescopically zooms out through rescaling while preserving its thermodynamic properties to obtain information about the system’s macroscopic behavior.
There are many fields associated with complex networks. I am interested to understand from a topological level why power grids fail, why economies collapse, why political changes in power occur, why genes are expressed, and why we are able to recall memories so quickly among other things. In our group, we seek a fundamental understanding of how the constituents within a network exploit their topology to achieve a common goal.