Jordi Soriano Fradera is a Spanish physicist and Associate Professor of Physics at the University of Barcelona, where he leads the Neurophysics Group and serves as vice-director of the university’s Institute of Complex Systems (UBICS). He earned his PhD in condensed matter physics at the University of Barcelona before completing postdoctoral research in developmental biology in Germany and in neuroscience at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. For more than fifteen years, his group has developed in vitro neuronal cultures and biophysical models to study how connectivity and collective dynamics give rise to brain function, and how they break down in neurological disease. He has collaborated closely with medical teams on Parkinson’s, Huntington’s, Sanfilippo, and Alzheimer’s disease, and coordinated research under the EU Horizon 2020 NEU-CHiP project on biological computing. In this InterDialogue, recorded in Soriano’s lab among live neuronal cultures and imaging equipment, we trace his path from studying fluid fronts in porous media as a condensed matter physicist to a twenty-year career in neurophysics. We discuss how his group engineers rat and human stem-cell-derived neuronal cultures to model the brain’s structural and functional connectivity and to serve as disease models for Parkinson’s, Huntington’s, Sanfilippo, and Alzheimer’s, the prospects and limits of cell transplantation and personalized medicine, and why Soriano estimates a twenty-year horizon before such approaches reach the clinic. We also discuss his work on network damage, resilience, and criticality in neuronal cultures, the NEU-CHiP project’s attempt to train living neurons to perform computation, neuromorphic chips that mimic neurons in silicon, and a striking experiment in which donated human brain tissue was made to play back a melody fed to it through a robotic piano. We close by considering the ethical stakes of coupling neuronal cultures with robots and augmented-human technologies, Soriano’s efforts to help build neuroscience...

In this guest InterDialogue, folklorist and InterPlex content and operations strategist Rowan Glass converses with K. Brandon Barker, Associate Professor of Folklore at Indiana University Bloomington and editor of Children’s Folklore Review. Barker co-authored the book Folk Illusions with Claiborne Rice, introducing the term “folk illusions” to study children’s play forms in relation to the science of perception and cognition. He has also written on animal cognition and the folklore of science with comparative psychologist Daniel Povinelli, with whom he co-edited the book The Aesop’s Fable Paradigm. For several years, Barker led the Folklore and Science Section of the American Folklore Society, which he helped found. The conversation begins with two notoriously murky words: how to define both folklore and science when both terms carry so much baggage? Barker makes the case that “the folk” are far less naive than some scientists assume, and that folklore’s ethnographic methods can offer insights into problems like vaccine hesitancy and misinformation by taking seriously perspectives often overlooked by or inaccessible to scholars in other fields. Glass then addresses Barker’s research on folk illusions and what children’s play reveals about adultcentrism, body acquisition, and the science of perception. They probe the epistemological stakes of folklore scholarship in relation to the natural sciences, asking whether folklorists can or should advance universal claims and broad theoretical frameworks. They also talk about computation folklore and Barker’s work on the folklore of animal cognition. The conversation then turns toward humans’ seemingly inherent tendencies toward anthropomorphism and human exceptionalism—whether applied to animals or artificial intelligence. Barker asserts that our seemingly inherent penchant for projecting human qualities onto the non-human world might be more powerful, and perhaps more dangerous, than we realize. Timestamps 0:00 – Introduction 2:22 – Defining folklore 4:14 – Defining science and the “folk as naive” blind...

Arnab Bhattacharya is an Indian physicist and science communicator. He is a research professor at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, where he works in semiconductor optoelectronics. Since 2021, he has also served as director of the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education. Bhattacharya is an avid proponent of public engagement and science education. Since 2009, he has led and curated Chai and Why, a widely attended science café in Mumbai. In 2017, the Indian National Science Academy honored him with the Indira Gandhi Prize for the Popularization of Science, one of India’s most prestigious science awards, for his contributions to public science communication. In this wide-ranging and insightful InterDialogue, we explore interconnected questions surrounding science communication, education, and outreach in both Indian and global contexts. We also discuss Bhattacharya’s projects during the COVID-19 pandemic, when he helped create low-cost methods for decontaminating N95 masks for reuse by frontline responders. In addition, we talk about his research on nanomaterials and India’s potential for developing domestic industries centered on advanced technologies such as semiconductors, solar energy, and nuclear power. Beyond his scientific research and outreach work, we also touch on the importance of maintaining work-life balance, as well as Bhattacharya’s passion for Indian classical music, nature, and cooking. Timestamps 1:02 – Bhattacharya’s introduction to science and science communication 10:59 – Interventions in science communication in India 16:16 – Hands-on alternatives to theoretical learning 21:34 – Bhattacharya’s involvement in pandemic response in India 27:36 – Public health communication during the pandemic 33:09 – Problems facing public health and science communication in India 41:01 – Bhattacharya’s directorship of the Homi Bhabha Center for Science Education 45:04 – Impact of AI on science education in India 50:43 – Bhattacharya’s research on lighting technology 55:54 – India’s potential for a domestic semiconductor industry 1:00:57 –...

Marta González is a Venezuelan-American physicist and complexity scientist whose research explores the dynamics of human mobility, urban systems, and sustainability through the lens of statistical physics and network science. She is a professor of civil and environmental engineering and city and regional planning at the University of California, Berkeley, where she also serves as associate director of the Transportation Sustainability Research Center. González is internationally recognized for pioneering the use of large-scale mobility data to better understand cities and inform public policy. In this wide-ranging InterDialogue, González reflects on her journey from physics into complexity science and urban research, explaining how statistical physics provides powerful tools for understanding human mobility and the collective dynamics of cities. We discuss the emergence of urban science as an interdisciplinary field, the opportunities and limitations of mobile phone and mobility datasets, and how these data can improve transportation planning, climate adaptation, and the design of more resilient and sustainable cities. González also explores the challenges of translating scientific research into public policy, including questions of data access, privacy, and collaboration between researchers, governments, and industry. We further examine the future of urban mobility, autonomous vehicles, and clean energy, as well as the importance of international collaboration and expanding scientific capacity across the Global South. Finally, she reflects on the broader promise of complexity science for addressing some of the most pressing social and environmental challenges facing rapidly urbanizing societies. Timestamps 0:00 – Introduction and Marta González’s path into complexity science 5:01 – From statistical physics to human mobility research 10:18 – Mobile phone data and the emergence of urban science 15:42 – Sustainable cities, climate adaptation, and resilience 20:24 – Privacy, data access, and international collaboration 25:42 – Using complexity science to inform urban policy 29:32 – Measuring the impact of remote work...

Javier Buldú is a Spanish physicist and complexity scientist whose research spans complex networks, nonlinear dynamics, neuroscience, and sports analytics. He leads the Complex Systems Group at the King Juan Carlos University in Madrid and has held research positions at institutions including the Spanish Astrobiology Center and the University of Oxford. Buldú has also played a prominent role in building the international complex systems community through initiatives such as the Latin American Conference on Complex Networks (LANET), the Interdisciplinary Group of Complex Systems in Madrid, and the Sicómoro Foundation–URJC Chair in Complex Systems. In this InterDialogue, we trace Buldú’s intellectual journey from his early work on chaos, synchronization, and laser-based communication systems to his pioneering contributions to network science. We discuss his research on general complex networks, functional brain networks, Alzheimer’s disease, and the emerging field of “networks of networks,” exploring how competing and cooperating systems can be modeled across scales ranging from neuroscience to economics and international relations. We then turn to Buldú’s influential work applying complexity science to football, examining how advances in data collection, tracking technologies, and artificial intelligence are transforming both sports analytics and network research more broadly. He explains how professional sports provide an unprecedented laboratory for studying collective behavior and spatial networks, and how insights derived from sports data may ultimately inform the study of many other complex systems. We also discuss science communication, the future of complexity science, the development of network science in Latin America, and the opportunities and challenges posed by AI in scientific research. Finally, Buldú reflects on the personal side of scientific life, including his passion for long-distance motorcycle travel and the role it plays in maintaining balance and perspective. Timestamps 0:00 – Introduction 2:42 – From laser chaos to network science 6:29 – Brain networks, synchronization, and Alzheimer’s...

Ciro Cattuto is an Italian physicist and complexity scientist whose work explores the intricate relationships between human behavior and digital technologies. Since 2008, he has served as Scientific Director of the ISI Foundation, based in Turin, Italy. He is also the founder and principal investigator of the Sociopatterns Collaboration. Throughout his career, Cattuto has held a range of influential research, fellowship, advisory, and board positions in Italy, the United States, and Japan. In this thought-provoking InterDialogue, we trace Cattuto’s intellectual journey from theoretical solid-state physics into complex systems science, a multicultural path that unfolded across three continents. We also discuss his contributions to data science and complex network research, including his work on some of the first digital social networks. We then examine what it means to conduct interdisciplinary research and how such collaborations can be cultivated more effectively. Cattuto also draws on his experience at the intersection of complex networks and epidemiology as a case of interdisciplinary bridge-building in practice. We further discuss the research priorities and guiding principles of the ISI Foundation, especially in relation to its current focus on computational social science and opportunities for policy impact. Finally, we reflect on both the promise and the profound challenges associated with the growing integration of artificial intelligence into scientific research and society more broadly. Timestamps 1:41 – Cattuto’s background and trajectory in complex systems science 9:19 – ISI as a hub of European complex systems science 11:46 – Interdisciplinary collaborations at ISI 14:38 – Interdisciplinarity and institutional funding frameworks 16:52 – Interdisciplinarity across generational, disciplinary, and national boundaries 19:36 – Computational social science and other interdisciplinary research areas at ISI 24:06 – Translating research into policy and governance 25:26 – Social science contributions to AI and computational research 27:36 – Studying complex systems using AI 29:59 – Challenges...