Ruben Kubiak

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I'm a 23 years old graduate student at the University of Texas. I studied physics and psychology in Wuerzburg, Germany, switched to UT and now I'm working on my one-year-intensive-master in physics. I'm working in the Section of Integrative Biology on the spread of epidemic diseases with Lauren Meyers (SFI Faculty). My scientific interests are very broad. I can be warmed for almost everything - okay, not languages or (bad) philosophy. That's my weak side... ;-) Ahhh.... and the picture is the best I could find. (:

Dan's questions

My answers:

1. What are your main interests? Feel free to include a "pie in the sky"big idea!

My main interest is in interdisciplinary science. I am a physics student but I am less interested in "classical physics" than in network theory, neural networks and mathematical epidemiology. In general, I am always interested to find new ways of doing physics with non-physical science - to use ideas of physics in other research fields. This can be e.g. in economics, sociology or biology.

2. What sorts of expertise can you bring to the group?

I am a physics student - therefore, I think I know something about physics and math.  :) In addition, I studied psychology and my research right now is about the spread of epidemics. So I have some knowledge of biology and psychology and I know C\C++, Mathematica, etc. well enough to write simulations (okay, 10% of the time programming, 80% debugging, 10% going crazy because it doesn't work).

3. What do you hope to get out of the CSSS?

First of all, I want to learn more. What exactly - well, I am interested in nearly everything. It would be nice to learn more about neural networks or the use of complexity theory in economics, because I do not know too much about this. But I am happy to learn anything and to see who else is interested in this kind of research. I hope this is a good place to get in contact with other researchers, who share my interests.

4. Do you have any possible projects in mind for the CSSS?

This is a hard question. I have knowledge of theoretical epidemiology so I could give some expertise into this. But I am thinking about the use of network models in social psychology since my classes in this. I have not seen any research about this as yet but I think that maybe it could be possible to describe group phenomenons by a network model.

Question on my own account

Do you need a PhD student? Do you know anybody, who does? Well... I'm very happy here at UT and would like to stay but because of my girlfriend I want to got back to Europe. I got some offers as yet (Oxford, ETH, Max-Planck-Institute, Nils-Bohr-Institute, etc.) but I'm still searching for nice opportunities - so if you have something in mind, I would be glad!

BTW: Yeah, I know, it's unusual. But this Wiki should be better than craigslist. And I can pay in beer-currency for good hints.. ;-)