Maps to explore the information space

Martin Rosvall focuses on the interaction between information, communication and structure in living systems. Whether it is about transactions between banks, the spread of disease or the changing species distribution on earth, the central question remains the same: How does the pattern of interaction between different things affect their function together?

To map information flows in large networks, Martin Rosvall, together with colleagues, has developed new mathematical models and powerful algorithms. They make it possible to comprehend the structure of everything from the myriad transactions between the world's banks and the flow of ideas between scientists to the spread of influenza and how human activity affects the species distribution on earth.

The key to understanding these systems is collaboration across traditional research boundaries: skilled method developers from, for example, physics and computer science working together with economists, epidemiologists and ecologists, among others.

Martin Rosvall dreams of a mapping tool that makes exploring the information space as easy as navigating our geographical world with Google Maps.

In 2019 Martin Rosvall was installed as professor of theoretical physics with a specialization in computational science at Umeå University.

Biography

Martin Rosvall was born in Uppsala in 1978 and grew up in Sävar, north of Umeå. He studied engineering physics at Umeå University and attained a doctoral degree at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen. After his dissertation in 2006, he did a two-year postdoc at the Department of Biology at the University of Washington in Seattle, and since 2009 he is back in Umeå. In 2011 he became an Associate Professor.

He is passionate about research across departmental boundaries and has helped build IceLab, an interdisciplinary and creative environment at Umeå University.