Social Contagions

About Upcoming Events Past Events DTD Lab Members In the News

Overview

The Social Contagions, Artificial Intelligence, and Democracy workshop brings together scholars to explore how social contagions can be used to understand how AI and related digital technologies may challenge or, potentially, fortify democratic institutions and practices.

Whether we like it or not, digital technologies are integral to our modern society and our everyday life. They mediate global connections through multi-scale networks for trade, human mobility, social interactions, and information sharing.

Technology can either contribute to or undermine personal health and well-being; the ability to create, access, and disseminate high-quality information; the free exchange of goods and services; and opportunities to participate in civil society. Contagion science provides a valuable viewpoint for understanding the process of how things-including information, beliefs and attitudes, and goods and services-transmit from one agent to another in these networks.
As such, we seek participation from broad cross-disciplinary perspectives including biological, computational, social, economic, behavioral, and political realms.

Past Events

Social Contagions

Social Contagions, Artificial Intelligence, and Democracy

Friday, April 4, 2025 • 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM EDT

Rouss & Robertson Halls, McIntire School of Commerce, University of Virginia

DTD Lab Members

Faculty Affiliate

Madhav Marathe

Affiliations

Executive Director
Distinguished Professor of Biocomplexity
Professor of Computer Science

Bio

Madhav Marathe is an endowed Distinguished Professor of Biocomplexity, Executive Director of the Biocomplexity Institute, and a tenured Professor of Computer Science at the University of Virginia. Dr. Marathe is a passionate advocate and practitioner of transdisciplinary team science. During his 30-year professional career, he has established and led many large transdisciplinary projects and groups. His areas of expertise include digital twins, network science, artificial intelligence, multi-agent systems, high-performance computing, computational epidemiology, biological and socially coupled systems, and data analytics.

His prior positions include Professor of Computer Science and Director of the Network Dynamics and Simulation Science Laboratory within the Biocomplexity Institute of Virginia Tech and a team leader of research and computing in the Basic and Applied Simulation Science Group, Computer and Computational Sciences Division at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Dr. Marathe has published more than 500 articles in peer-reviewed journals, conferences, and workshops. Mentoring and training next-generation scientists has been his lifelong passion. He has mentored more than a dozen staff scientists, and (co)-advised more than 30 doctoral students, 20+ MS students, and 15 postdoctoral fellows.

Dr. Marathe and his team focus on developing the scientific foundations and the associated engineering principles to study large-scale biological, information, social, and technical (BIST) systems. His current interests span five broad themes: (i) methods to construct various BIST networks using partial and noisy data as well as procedural information; (ii) understanding the general form and structure of dynamical processes over BIST networks (e.g., key network/pathway properties and typical pathways that impact dynamics); (iii) algorithmic theory of optimization and control as it pertains to the dynamical processes, including methods to detect, enhance, arrest, and mitigate dynamics; (iv) general conceptual and algorithmic foundations to understand the co-evolution of the networks and dynamics; and (v) high-performance services-based computing solutions that can be delivered seamlessly to end users and policymakers.

In the News

Social Contagions

Modeling Life Itself: Madhav Marathe and the Science of Biocomplexity

In this episode of Hoos in STEM, host Ken Ono, UVA's STEM Advisor to the Provost, speaks with Madhav Marathe, Distinguished Professor and Executive Director of UVA’s Biocomplexity Institute. Marathe leads one of UVA’s most interdisciplinary research hubs where mathematicians, epidemiologists, social scientists, and AI systems work together to simulate the complex systems that shape our lives and is a faculty affiliate of the DTD Lab.

research.virginia.edu

Social Contagions, AI, and Democracy

Overview

Past Events

Social Contagions, Artificial Intelligence, and Democracy

DTD Lab Members

Steven L. Johnson

Madhav Marathe

Maria Lungu

In the News

Modeling Life Itself: Madhav Marathe and the Science of Biocomplexity

Connect with the DTD Lab

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