Thomas Maillart
From Santa Fe Institute Events Wiki
Hi everyone! I am third-year PhD candidate at ETH Zurich at the Department of Management, Technology and Economy.
What are your main interests? Feel free to include a "pie in the sky" big idea!
My research is framed around the general topic of Internet risks, including technical and behavioral information security, Internet-wide systemic dangers and collective behaviors, but also mechanisms of evolution of software as a lego assembly of pieces of code that must be constantly maintained and improved to stay competitive. Above all, my research interests are focused on learning and mastering the most relevant tools for studying complex systems, mainly based on empirical facts. For that I use various datasets such as packages dependencies in Linux Debian distribution and code modularity, concurrent versioning system and network traffic at the autonomous system (AS) level.
More broadly, I wish that science of complex systems could find practical application in policy making generally speaking, but more precisely concerning the Internet and its direct consequences on the society. My long term goal is to develop and better understand bottom-up democracy based on communication networks (Internet, cellphone and ad-hoc network). I would like to design a robust and resilient way to "restore" democracy in a country that would have (or could) become a totalitarian dictatorship.
What sort of expertise can you bring to the group?
- data mining
- statistical analysis in non-linear systems
- network dynamics
What do you hope to get out of the CSSS?
Before all, I would like to know about you and get inspired by how you study complexity in your respective fields.
By participating in the CSSS, I hope to broaden my know-how of tools used to disentangle complex systems and dynamics. I am particularly interested at enhancing my skills in
- evolutionary game theory
- machine learning
- agent-based modeling
- networks
Do you have any possible projects in mind for the CSSS?
Close to my field of research, I mainly would like to work on timing of human decision making. For instance, how people value opportunities and decisions in a time intensive environment?