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Title: 

Propagation of Shocks on Networks: Can Local Information Predict Survival?

Abstract: 

Complex systems are often fragile, where minor disruptions can cascade into dramatic collapses. Epidemics serve as a prime example of this phenomenon, while the 2008 financial crisis highlights how a domino effect, originating from the small subprime mortgage sector, can trigger global repercussions. Similarly, a massive power outage in eastern North America was seemingly set off by a localized fault. The mathematical theory underlying these phenomena is both elegant and foundational, profoundly shaping the field of Network Science since its inception. In this talk, I will present a unifying mathematical model for network fragility and cascading dynamics and explore its deep connections to the theory of local-weak convergence, pioneered by Benjamini-Schramm and Aldous-Steele.

Bio: 

Dr. Souvik Dhara is an Assistant Professor at the Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering at Purdue University. He previously held positions as a Schramm Fellow, with a joint appointment at MIT Mathematics and Microsoft Research, a Simons-Berkeley Fellow at the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing, UC Berkeley, and a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Brown University. Dr. Dhara earned his Ph.D. from the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Eindhoven University of Technology. In recognition of his doctoral work, he was awarded the Stieltjes Prize at the Dutch Mathematical Congress 2019. Dr. Dhara’s research lies at the intersection of applied probability and network science, with a primary focus on developing theoretical foundations for stochastic processes and algorithms on large-scale networks. His interests include cascades on networks, graph representation learning, and different notions of graph limits.