Complexity Science Group
University of Calgary
Vishal Sood
Vishal Sood
Post-doctoral Fellow
Physics Department, University of Calgary. 
Office: 504, Science B
Mailing address:
Department of Physics and Astronomy,
SB 605, University of Calgary
2500 University Drive NW
Calgary, AB
T2N 1N4
Email: vishal(dot)chandra(dot)sood(at)gmail(dot)com.
I have a PhD. in physics from Boston University.
For my PhD thesis I worked on interacting particle systems, specifically on the voter model with Prof. Sidney Redner.
Since September 2006 I am a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Calgary. I work in the Complexity Science Group, lead by Prof. Maya Paczuski.
Collaborators:
Tibor Antal, Daniel ben-Avraham, Kim Baskerville, Andrew Berdahl, Jacob Foster, Peter Grassberger, Paul Krapivski, Gabe Musso, Orion Penner, Maya Paczuski, Sidney Redner, Amer Shreim.
My Research:
My research interests are in the development and application of novel statistical physics and complex system methods. During my PhD I worked promarily on mathematical physics and statistical mechanics. Since I began working at Calgary I have been slowly migrating interestes towards biolgical problems. This I have been doing by reading the lastest research, interacting with various biologists at the University of Calgary, and discussing biological systems with colleagues withing the complexity science group. My latest research work has been on statistical physics problems motivated by biological phenomena as well as network analysis techniques applied to biological inference.
While I have learned the mathematical aspects of statistical mechanics and complex networks, through the Transdisciplinary Initiative, led by my supervisor Prof. Paczuski I have also had the oppurtunity to learn from various experts working in areas of biological and social sciences. These experts include microbiologists Michael Surette and Anthony Schryvers, computer scientist Przemyslaw Prusinkiewicz, sociologist Richard Hawkins, policy analyst Ron Bouchard, geomatician Danielle Marceau, systems biologist Sui Huang, and neuroscientist Naweed Syed. In these exchanges I have experienced the difficulties that arise when communicating across traditional disciplines. However, after many such discussions, I can confidently say that now I can consistently transcend the barriers of language and jargon, and grasp the heart of many diverse scientific problems. In collaboration with researchers at the University of Calgary and elsewhere, I am currently studying statistical physics models for several of these problems as well as developing new methods to analyse data from biological experiments. In the following I provide a synopsis of my current research and how this extends to my future interests.
Evolution of a heterogeneously structured population.
Biological Regulatory Dynamics.
Social dynamics and opinion formation.
Presentations.
Noisy messaging on networks.
Invited talk, Computational Philosophy Workshop, Copenhagen, Denmark, October 11-13, 2007.
Noise in biological processes.
Complexity Science Seminar, Complexity Science Group, 13 September 2007.
Somite segmentation and Ultradian Oscillations: a review of work by
various experimental groups.
Complexity Science Seminar, Complexity Science Group, 31 August 2007.
Voter model and evolutionary dynamics.
Poster session at Dynamics Days 2007, Boston MA, USA, January 2007.
Evolutionary dynamics on degree-heterogeneous graphs.
Contributed talk, Cornell Summer School in Probability, Ithaca, NY, USA, July
2006.
Voter Model on heterogeneous graphs.
Weekly seminar at LANL, October 2004.
Contributed talk, APS March Meeting, Los Angeles, CA, USA, March 2004.
Contributed talk, Cornell Summer School in Probability, Ithaca, NY, USA, July
2005.
First passage properties of the Erdös-Renyi random graph,
Poster session at Stat-Phys-23 Bangalore, India July 2004
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