Hernán Alejandro Makse

Professor of Physics
Levich Institute and
Physics Department
City College of New York
Steinman Hall, T1M-12
140th Street and Convent Avenue
New York, NY 10031-9198
(212) 650-6847, (212) 650-6835 (fax)
Hernan

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This is the lab of Hernán Makse at the Levich Institute and Department of Physics of City College of New York in New York City. We are interested in the theoretical understanding of complexity. We are working towards the development of new arquitectural laws for complex networks, from biological systems, to the Internet, the web, to social networks and cities. We also focus on the study of jammed matter, spanning from granular materials, colloidal suspensions, dense emulsions to glasses in search of unifying theoretical frameworks. We explore this variety of out of equilibrium systems in terms of their behavior as they experience structural arrest or jamming. The group focuses on the theoretical and computational approaches in parallel with experiments.

Our research is related to "emergent properties", i.e., "properties not contained in the simple laws of physics, although they are a consequence of them".

For the latest research, see a feature article in the Journal of Student Research, and the presentations on granular matter, colloidal glasses and emulsions, jamming transition, effective temperature in granular matter, Edwards statistical mechanics of jammed matter, random close packing (RCP), polydisperse, non-spherical packing and cavity methods for force propagation, nonlinear elasticity of granular matter, fractal complex networks and renormalization group, protein and social networks, and urban economics and cities, and big data. To download data and computer codes for: (a) Molecular Dynamics (DEM) of granular matter, (b) fractal analysis of complex networks, (c) Clustering Analysis of cities, (d) experimental data on colloids and glasses, (e) generating sequences with long-range correlations, (f) calculating all minima and transition states of the energy landscape in small clusters of LJ and Hertz particles, (g) hard sphere packing from RLP to FCC, (h) fMRI brain data, and (i) obesity and cancer spreading, visit SOFTWARE AND DATA.

Science Blog:

  • Novel insights into the evolution of protein networks.

    March 21, 2013. Paper in PLOS ONE. System-wide networks of proteins are indispensable for organisms. Function and evolution of these networks are among the most fascinating research questions in biology. Bioinformatician Thomas Rattei, University of Vienna, and physicist Hernan Makse, City University New York (CUNY), have reconstructed ancestral protein networks. The results are of high interest not only for evolutionary research but also for the interpretation of genome sequence data. Read more at: Phys.org. Full dataset of reconstructed ancestral protein interaction networks available here.

  • Environmental factors may affect the spread of obesity.

    Paper in Scientific Reports. Press release: An international team of researchers' study of the spatial patterns of the spread of obesity suggests America's bulging waistlines may have more to do with collective behavior than genetics or individual choices. The team, led by City College of New York physicist Hernaán Makse, found correlations between the epidemic's geography and food marketing and distribution patterns. Talk at the Wolfram Data Summit 2012. Press Releases: CCNY. NSF Highlights. Science Daily. Medicalxpress. Science Blog. Supermarket or not Supermarket (Care2.com). The visible embryo. The Atlantic cities. Jeff Nesbit's "On the Edge" blog in US News. Dataset available here.

  • Connections aren't everything.

    Who are the best spreaders of information in a social network? Best connected individuals may not be the most influential spreaders. Instead, location in the network, as defined by the k-shell, determines influence. Paper: pdf or cond-mat. Press releases: Technology review, Science Daily, Fast company, Science for SEO, Emedia, NSF, India Times. Collaboration between Bar-Ilan University, Boston University, Stockholm University, NYU, and CCNY. Nature Physics 2010. (High resolution image and cover, created with the lanet-vi tool).

  • The conundrum of brain networks: small-world or fractal modularity?

    Paper. Dataset of brain networks and computer codes for network analysis available here. Published in PNAS, Feb. 20 (2012).

  • Definition of random close packing of granular matter in the Edwards thermodynamic framework.

    Physica A 2010. The codes to generate hard spheres packing from random loose packing to FCC can be downloaded here.

  • Fractal babies:

    We investigate the network of human cell differentiation from the fertilized egg up to a crying baby. PNAS, 2010. Dataset of cell types. The full network is published in the Supporting Information in PNAS.

  • Zipf's Law for all cities, large and small.

    The City Clustering Algorithm, CCA, allows for a test of Zipf's law for cities of all sizes. We find (ta,tan,ta,tan..) that Zipf's law is surprisingly valid up to small cities of a few hundred inhabitants. Collaboration with Xavier Gabaix, Stern, NYU. Paper on Zipf's law for all cities. Published in American Economic Review, August 2011. Below is an image of all the population clusters identified by the CCA in the USA and the CCA cluster around London superimposed with a Google maps.

  • Statistical patterns in human communication and growth of cities.

    We find scaling laws in human communication patterns (PNAS).
    A recent paper presents a new way to define cities based on clustering algorithms from percolation theory. We find that the growth rate of cities and its standard deviation follow (surprise, surprise..) power-laws with the city size, in contradiction to Gibrat's law.

  • Renormalization Group analysis in fractal complex networks

    The small world-fractal transition and information flow. See recent paper in Phys. Rev. Lett. 2010.

  • Work on random close packing.

    Paper in the Nature issue of May 29, 2008, and Supplementary Materials. News & Views editorial by Zamponi. Press release. Nature Physics: Research Highlights, p435. Physics World. Science Daily. Physorg.com. Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News.

    The following follow up papers are in Physica A and in cond-mat: Jamming I: A Hamiltonian for jammed matter. Jamming II: A phase diagram for jammed matter. Jamming III: Characterizing Randomness via the Entropy of Jammed Matter. Jamming IV: A distribution of volumes and coordination number in jammed matter: mesoscopic approximation. Jamming V: Jamming in two dimensions.

  • Hernan Makse is honored by the Mayor of New York City

    with the Mayor's Award for Excellence in Science and Technology to Young Investigator for playing with sand [press release of the New York Academy of Science, newspaper, pdf, faculty spotlight].

  • How to calculate the fractal dimension of a complex network: the box covering algorithm.

    Can you improve the box-covering of a network? Download the algorithms and Databases of complex networks used in our studies to calculate the fractal dimension of a complex network. Including our PNAS paper on Scaling Theory of Transport in Complex Biological Networks in the May 2007 issue (pdf, supplementary information).

  • Colloids aging at equilibrium.

    Explanation. From the August 2006 issue of Nature Physics.

    [Colloidal Glass] [PPT][Teff]

    [Movie1][Movie2] [Data]

  • Origin of fractality in complex networks.

    Our advice: Be fractal and be robust. From the April 2006 issue of Nature Physics.

  • Self similar Complex networks:

    Explanation of self-similarity of Complex Networks. What is the relation between these Romanesque broccoli and the protein-protein interaction network of E.coli? From the January 2005 issue of Nature.

  • Romanesque networks:

    • News and Views Editorial by Strogatz on Self-similar Complex Networks in the January 27th, 2005 issue of Nature.

  • Research on thermodynamics of jamming:

    Simulations and experiments to investigate the statistical mechanics of jammed particulate matter.

  • Measuring the temperature of sand:

    Explanation.

  • Statistical Mechanics of Jammed Matter:

    Jamming is even cooler than you thought. A review article by H. A. Makse, J. Brujic and S. F. Edwards.

  • Jamming in a box:

    See a recent News Feature in the October 19th, 2003 issue of Nature.

  • Taking the temperature of sand:

    A News and Views Nature Editorial by Bob Behringer in Nature.

SPECIALS