Big news! Laurent Hébert-Dufresne will lead UVM’s new Center of Excellence in Modeling Complexity, part of the Vermont Complex Systems Institute. The center will bring researchers together across disciplines, to study how change spreads through interconnected complex systems. It will also support training for students and researchers working in mathematics, computer science, public health, and the social sciences.

The launch was announced at Laurent’s November 11th lecture, “What is a group?”, held to celebrate his 2026 Erdős–Rényi Prize and Young Scientist Award for Socio- and Econophysics. The talk revisited a decade of our research on social groups and their role in shaping dynamics, from disease spread to collective decision-making.