Studying the frontiers of mathematics on the world stage
Dr. Pawel Pralat uses the mathematics of graphs and networks to study everything from viruses to how misinformation spreads
Professor Pawel Pralat is a mathematician on the move. On a recent April afternoon, he had just unpacked from a trip to Germany, and was getting ready for another conference, this time in Barbados.
鈥淢athematicians don鈥檛 need any equipment, so we鈥檙e very mobile,鈥� says Pralat, a professor in the Department of Mathematics specializing in network theory. 鈥淎s long as we have our brains and our notepads, we鈥檙e good.鈥�
A frequent destination is Berkeley, California. Last fall he participated in a four-month program examining fundamental questions in computer science, an invitation-only event hosted by the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing. And he鈥檒l be back in Berkeley this fall for another four-month program, this time hosted by the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, investigating algorithmic fairness and equity. Meanwhile, he鈥檚 been attending workshops at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and at the SGH Warsaw School of Economics, in Poland, as part of a collaboration funded by a NSERC Alliance International Collaboration grant.
The NSERC program focuses on entities such as 鈥渉ypergraphs.鈥� In ordinary graphs, an edge connects two vertices, or nodes; in a hypergraph, an edge can connect any number of nodes. This makes hypergraphs perfect for modelling phenomena like the spread of infectious diseases. For example, while one person passing a virus along to a second person is easily represented by an ordinary graph, if one person infects seven people at a meeting, that鈥檚 more accurately modelled by a hypergraph. Moreover, Pralat says, the same methods can be used to study related problems, like the way information鈥攐r misinformation鈥攕preads via social media.
Pralat says his frequent participation in international conferences and workshops shows that 成人大片 is being recognized 鈥渁s having experts in the field that are collaborating with other world leaders from institutions like Berkeley or MIT or Stanford.鈥� His grad students and postdocs benefit as well. 鈥淚t exposes them to cutting-edge research, so they can be full participants and become future leaders in the field.鈥�
Fun fact: The roots of network theory go back to 1736, when the Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler posed a problem called 鈥淭he Seven Bridges of K枚nigsberg.鈥�