Bio

Education

• B.Sc. Mathematics and B.Sc. Computer Science (dual degree) cum laude, 2004 - 2008Israel Institute of Technology (Technion), Israel.

• Phd, Computer Science, 2010 - 2014University of St Andrews, UK.

Positions

• Assistant Professor of Computer Science, 2017 - presentDepartment of Mathematics and Computer Science, Wesleyan University , CT.

• Postdoctoral Scholar, 2014 - 2017Department of Mathematics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC.

• Software Engineer, 2008 - 2010Diligent Technologies (acquired by IBM), Israel.

Active Grants

• “CRII: III: Effective Geometry of Urban Travel Patterns,” NSF CISE, $173,650 [Sole PI]. 8/2020 - 8/2023.

Editorial Board Member

• Nature Scientific Data, Physical Sciences (2016 - present)

• Complexity (2020 - present)

• Journal of Computational Science Complexity (2021 - present)

Reviewer

• Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science

• European Physical Journal B (EPJB)

• Europhysics Letters (EPL)

• IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems

• International Journal of Geographical Information Science

• Journal of Applied Mathematics

• Journal of Applied Network Science

• Journal of Complex Networks

• Journal of the Royal Society Interface

• Journal of Swarm and Evolutionary Computation

• Journal of Theoretical Biology

• Knowledge and Information Systems (KAIS)

• Nature Communications

• Nature Scientific Data

• Northeast Journal of Complex Systems (NEJCS)

• Physical Review E (PRE)

• Physical Review Letters (PRL)

Program Committee

• Northeast Regional Conference on Complex Systems (NERCCS 18, NERCCS 19, NERCCS 2020, NERCCS 2021, NERCCS 2022).

• SIAM Workshop on Network Science (SIAM NS17, SIAM NS18, SIAM NS19, SIAM NS20)

• International Conference on Complex Systems (ICCS 18, ICCS 20)

• International Conference on Complex Networks & Their Applications (COMPLEX NETWORKS 2020)

• Conference on Complex Networks (CompleNet 2019)

Collaborators

• Marc Barthelemy, CEA Institut de Physique Theorique

• Simon Dobson, School of Computer Science, University of St Andrews

• Gaogao Dong, Nonlinear Science Research Center, Jiangsu University

• Erika Franklin Fowler, Department of Government, Wesleyan University

• Lazaros Gallos, Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical ComputerRutgers University

• Shlomo Havlin, Department of Physics, Bar-Ilan University

• Dror Y. Kenett, U.S. Department of the Treasury, Office of Financial Research

• Peter J. Mucha, Department of Mathematics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

• Louis Shekhtman, Department of Physics, Bar-Ilan University

• Natalie Stanley, Department of Mathematics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

• Emanuele Strano, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, MIT

• Dane Taylor, Department of Mathematics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Press Coverage

• “Study suggests London Underground may be 'too fast'” by Jonathan Webb in the BBC news: Science & Environment (2015)

• “London Underground would be faster if it moved more slowly” by K.G Orphanides in the Wired (2015)

• “Faster London trains could make your commute even longer” by Jacob Aron in the New Scientist (2015)

• “Could making the Tube go slower actually make it more efficient?” by Doug Bolton in the Independent: Science news (2015)

• “London Underground trains run too fast, say mathematicians” by Matt Paytonin in the Metro (2015)

• “Why the London Underground is too efficient for its own good” by Tim Sandle in the Digital Journal (2015)

• “Sometimes a Slow Train Is a Good Thing” by Nathan Collins in the Pacific Standard (2015)

Recent Papers/Preprints

• October 2021: "One Node at a Time: Node-Level Network Classification", S Shai, I Jacobs, PJ Mucha. ICMLA 2021

• July 2021: "A guide to choosing and implementing reference models for social network analysis," EA Hobson, MJ Silk, NH Fefferman, DB Larremore, P Rombach, S Shai, N Pinter-Wollman. Biological Reviews

• February 2021: "Geographic impressions in Facebook political ads," A Gitomer, PV Oleinikov, LM Baum, EF Fowler, S Shai. Applied Network Science 6, 1-20

• October 2019: "Comparing shared patient networks across payer," JG Trogdon, WH Weir, S Shai, PJ Mucha, TM Kuo, AM Meyer, KB Stitzenberg. Journal of General Internal Medicine 34, 2014–2020

• July 2018: "Resilience of networks with community structure behaves as if under an external field," G Dong, J Fan, LM Shekhtman, S Shai, R Du, L Tian, X Chen, HE Stanley, S Havlin. PNAS 115

Selected Talks

• April 2020: "Percolation-based Network Algorithms for Destroying/Protecting Modular Networks". Invited talk at the Third Northeast Regional Conference on Complex Systems (NERCCS 2020) in SUNY Buffalo, NY.

• November 2018: "Topology and Geometry of Urban Transportation Networks". Invited talk at the Center for Collective Dynamics of Complex Systems (CoCo) at Binghamton University.

• January 2017: "Warping the urban space: geometry and dimensionality of urban transportation systems". Contributed talk at NetSciX in Hilton Tel Aviv, Israel.

• March 2016: "Generalized network representations of multimodal transportation systems”. Invited talk at the workshop on Generalized Network Structures and Dynamics in the Mathematical Biosciences Institute (MBI). Columbus, OH.

• December 2015: "Multiplex Networks in Metropolitan Areas: Generic Features and Local Effects". Contributed talk at the Network Frontier Workshop in Northwestern University. Evanston, IL.