Prof. Dirk Brockmann

Department of Engineering Sciences and Applied Mathematics,
Robert R. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science,
Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems
Northwestern University Transportation Center
Max-Planck-Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization
Email_icons_099 brockmann (@northwestern.edu)

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Link Salience – Do complex networks have robust skeletons? In a recent paper (Grady et al. Nature Communications, 3 : 864 (2012)) we show that many biological, technological and socio-economical networks do. And despite the networks’ differences, their skeletons share universal features.

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In the News: The Atlantic Cities – We have been looking at the spread of epidemics all wrong. This article discusses a new perspective on global disease dynamics. Read more.

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Our research on Krulwich wonders – A 'Whom Do You Hang With?' Map Of America. Read more.

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Numb3rs: Scratch – Charlie Eppes and Nancy Hackett use “Dirk Brockmann’s work with human mobility networks” to predict the location of a future robbery in this episode of the CBS show. Read more. or watch clip.

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The Origin of “Where’s George”-Research – How an old school friend triggered the study of dollar bill movements that led to the discovery of the scaling laws of human travel (download PDF version).


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“Follow the Money”
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wins NSF/AAAS Visualization Challenge – Christian Thiemann and Daniel Grady's five-minute video on identifying effective communities in the U.S. tied for first place in the category Non-Interactive Media. More at NSF or Science (pdf).



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Computational Epidemiology

A main focus of our research is the understanding of the dynamics of human infectious diseases. We develop computational models, new analytic and numerical techniques and large-scale quantitative and predictive computer simulations to study various aspects of the dynamics of epidemics. page2_sidebar_2more...

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Complex Networks and Human Mobility

Another key focus of our work is to reach a deeper understanding of complex biological and artificial networks. Particularly in connection to our research on spatial disease dynamics we are interested in the structure and properties of human mobility networks. page2_sidebar_2more...

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Complex Dynamics in Biological Systems

Using methods from systems biology, nonlinear dynamics, and stochastic processes we investigate the dynamics of these biological systems in a number of projects, e.g. we investigate facilitated target localization of transcription factors on DNA based on intersegment transfer. page2_sidebar_2more...

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Anomalous Diffusion and Fractional Transport

We investigate anomalous diffusion processes that evolve in structured environments or are subject to spatially variable forces or potentials. We develop new theoretical frameworks for their description in terms of fractional Fokker–Planck equations. page2_sidebar_2more...