“Recent trends in opinion dynamics modeling”

                                                                Prof. Maria Elena Valcher

                                                              University of Padova, Italy

 Chair: Prof. Bahram Shafai, Northeastern University, USA                                                                   Room : Sla del Chiostro

Abstract

Over the last few decades, the modelling and analysis of sociological phenomena have attracted the interests of researchers from various fields, such as sociology, economics, and mathematics.

Opinion dynamics models aim at describing and predicting the evolution of the opinions of a group of individuals as a result of their mutual influence/appraisal.

Some of the most celebrated models to describe how opinions of a group of mutually interacting individuals evolve are the Hegselmann-Krause (or Bounded-Confidence) model and the Friedkin-Johnsen (FJ) model. The former captures the natural attitude of individuals to be influenced only by the individuals whose opinions are reasonably close to their own. The latter, instead, models the attitude of individuals to form their opinions by balancing exogenous and endogenous influences, namely to find a compromise between the opinions of the other individuals and their a priori beliefs.

In this talk we will present recent results about extended versions of these two models, and present some future directions and challenges related to opinion dynamics models.

Biography of Prof. Maria Elena Valcher

Maria Elena Valcher received the Master's degree in electrical engineering and the Ph.D. degree in system engineering from the University of Padova, Padova, Italy, in 1991 and 1995, respectively.

Since January 2005, she has been a full Professor with the University of Padova. She has authored or co-authored 80 papers, which appeared in international journals, 95 conference papers, 2 text-books, and several book chapters. Her research interests include multidimensional systems theory, polynomial matrix theory, behavior theory, cooperative control and consensus, positive switched systems, and Boolean control networks.

Dr. Valcher was in the Editorial Board of the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control from 1999 to 2002 and Systems and Control Letters from 2004 to 2010. She has been on the Editorial Boards of Automatica since 2006, Multidimensional Systems and Signal Processing since 2004, SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization since 2012, European Journal of Control since 2103, and IEEE Access since 2014. She was Vice President Member Activities of the CSS from 2006 to 2007, Vice President Conference Activities of the CSS from 2008 to 2010, and CSS President in 2015. She was a recipient of the 2011 IEEE CSS Distinguished Member Award. Since January 2017, she has been the Editor-in-Chief for the IEEE Control Systems Letters