Engineering Issues in Information Spreading over Complex Networks

Speaker:  Wallace Tang

Abstract

       The investigation of social spreading phenomena has a long tradition in sociology and economics. Since seventies, the effects of the network of contacts in the spreading process have been postulated, and recently, with the development of the theory of complex networks, these effects are gradually unraveled. The complex network theory has paved the way for explaining the spreading processes such as virus propagation in social and computer networks, the diffusion of innovations, the occurrence of information cascades in social and economic systems, information diffusion in a society, and so on. In this talk, information spreading will be considered from the engineering perspective. Some major engineering issues in related to information spreading, including modeling, application, control and optimization, will be described and some of our recent developments in this research direction will be presented.

Biography

       Wallace Tang received his PhD degree from the City University of Hong Kong in 1996, and is currently an associate professor in the Department of Electronic Engineering at the same university. He has published over 90 journal publications and five book chapters, and co-authored two books, focusing on evolutionary algorithms, nonlinear systems and circuits, complex networks (with an h-index of 22 based on Scopus).  He was an associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems Part II in 2004-05 and is now an associate editor of Dynamics of Continuous, Discrete & Impulsive Systems, Series B; a guest associate editor for International Journal of Bifurcation and Chaos. He was also a distinguished lecturer in the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society in 2007-08.