Conference: Contagion on Complex Social Systems 2023

Studying how information, diseases, and ideas spread through society is crucial for understanding and addressing pressing societal issues, including public health crises, misinformation, and national security. Our current understanding of these processes is fragmented because research on contagion processes occurs in silos. This award provides funding for the second edition of the "Contagion on Complex Social Systems" (CCSS) conference, which serves as a platform for researchers from diverse fields to exchange ideas and develop innovative approaches for modeling contagion in complex social systems. There will be six invited talks from leading researchers in their respective fields, the opportunity for up to 25 contributed talks, and expert-led discussions. An essential focus of the conference is training the scientific workforce in cutting-edge methods and tools, thus fostering the growth of a skilled research community. The CCSS conference aims to promote interdisciplinary collaboration and advance the understanding of contagion processes in social systems by bringing together researchers from applied mathematics, social sciences, public health, epidemiology, economics, ecology, and computer science. The conference features presentations on topics such as epidemic modeling, misinformation spread, and financial contagion, with the explicit aim of attaining an integrated understanding of contagion processes. The conference will emphasize support to early career researchers and is committed to fostering diversity and inclusion by encouraging participation from underrepresented groups. Videos of the lectures and transcript will be uploaded on the conference website: https://ccss-conference.github.io/ This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.