Filippo Radicchi, professor of Informatics at the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, has received a three-year, $525,000 Air Force Office of Scientific Research grant through the Air Force Research Laboratory. The grant started Aug. 1 and runs until July of 2027.
Radicchi said the grant’s main goal is to characterize and optimize infrastructural networks that serve the physical flow of persons, goods or information. Decision-making processes that regard the management of any logistic system, such as communication and transportation networks, and supply chains, could benefit from the results of this grant.
“We will reconstruct the infrastructure and infer the demand of several logistic systems within the U.S.,” Radicchi said. “Critical infrastructures are the backbone of our society. Studying their structure is essential to understand how effective these networks are in supplying the service they are demanded of.”
Radicchi said researchers will study flow dynamics on complex networks focusing on optimization problems that concern the structure of the networks that sustain the flow and the rules that dictate the dynamics of the flow. They also will study the mathematical properties of the optimization problems, design algorithms for approximating solutions, and apply theoretical and algorithmic approaches to the analysis of large-scale datasets describing flow dynamics in real networks.
“We will consider not only static, single-layer networks, but also time-varying, multi-layer networks,” Radicchi said in the grant statement of objectives. “We will achieve our objectives relying on analytical and numerical methods proper of graph theory, complexity theory, data science and statistical physics.”
Radicchi's grant reflects consistent difference-making research by Luddy School faculty, said Johan Bollen, Department of Informatics chair and professor of Informatics and Cognitive Science.
“This award demonstrates that the world-class research conducted by Professor Radicchi and his team has wide-ranging applications in science, but also in industry and defense,” Bollen said. “Thanks to thought-leaders like Professor Radicchi, the department of Informatics at the Luddy School stands at the forefront of supporting policy-makers and stakeholders in decision-making with respect to critical infrastructure and the allocation of resources.”
This is Radicchi’s second Air Force grant, a follow up to the one he received in 2021.
“Both projects focus on optimization problems on complex networks,” he said, “so they share some theoretical and computational components of the research. However, the type of optimization problems of the two projects are different. Also, the real applications of these problems are very different.”
The Air Force Research Laboratory, the Air Force’s primary scientific research and development center, has a lead role in discovery, development and integration of affordable warfighting technologies for U.S. air, space and cyberspace forces. It provides grants and funding for research among universities and industry laboratories as well as its own laboratories.