My research interests are broad, and currently include statistical patterns in complex systems, complex networks (structure, function, methods; technological, biological and social), statistical inference and machine learning, power-law distribtions (data, mechanisms); laws and contingencies in conflict (terrorism, war), human social dynamics; the Internet (structure, routing, security); adaptive and evolutionary computation; self-organization; robustness; innovation; and algorithmic game theory.
Much of my work focuses on understanding how to separate what is contingent from what is constrained or structured in a complex phenomenon. This general idea can be applied to complex social, biological, and technological systems. It has strong emphases on discovery and modeling, using both numeric and analytic tools, and it draws heavily on ideas and tools from computer science, statistics, machine learning, and statistical physics. Most recently, I've been applying these ideas to understand the large-scale structure of complex networks, the mechanisms and constraints that give rise to morphological diversity among species, and the patterns of terrorists.
In addition to basic research, I regularly advise or consult for businesses on topics related to my areas of expertise.
Press
Evolution and distribution of species body size
LiveScience (July 2008, Clara Moskowitz),
SFI Press Release (July 2008), Science News (July 2008).
Hierarchical structure and prediction of missing links
Nature (May 2008, by Sidney Redner),
SFI Press Release (May 2008),
Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends (May 2008),
Slashdot (May 2008), Science News (June 2008, by Julie Rehmeyer),
BioEssays (July 2008, by Natali Gulbahce and Sune Lehmann).
Power-law distributions in empirical data
Nature Physics (May 2008, by Mark Buchanan),
Wall Street Journal (July 2009, by Carl Bialik)
Mapping the Internet
SIAM News (June 2005, by Sara Robinson)
Patterns in Terrorism
Nature News (February 2005),
PhysicsWeb (February 2005),
Die Welt (March 2005; in German),
Nature News (July 2005),
The Economist (July 2005),
The Guardian (August 2005),
The Why Files (June 2006),
American Physical Society (APS) Bulletin (November 2006),
SFI Bulletin (Spring 2008),
arxivblog (February 2009),
arxivblog (June 2009),
Neue Zuercher Zeitung (June 2009; in German).
Publications
- The developmental dynamics of terrorist organizations.
A. Clauset and K. S. Gleditsch.
Submitted to Science (2009). - A generalized fission-fussion model for the frequency of severe terrorist attacks.
A. Clauset and F. W. Wiegel.
Submitted to Journal of Conflict Resolution (2009). - The Strategic Calculus of Terrorism: Substitution and Competition in the Israel-Palestine Conflict.
A. Clauset, L. Heger, M. Young and K. S. Gleditsch.
Conflict & Cooperation, to appear (2009). - Power-law distributions in empirical data.
A. Clauset, C. R. Shalizi and M. E. J. Newman.
SIAM Review, to appear (2009). (Download the code.) - On the Bias of Traceroute Sampling.
D. Achlioptas, A. Clauset, D. Kempe and C. Moore.
Journal of the ACM 56(4), 1-28 (2009). (link to ACM website) - Evolutionary Model of Species Body Mass Diversification.
A. Clauset and S. Redner.
Physical Review Letters 102, 038103 (2009). - How many species have mass M?
A. Clauset, D. J. Schwab and S. Redner.
American Naturalist 173, 256 - 263 (2009). - Controlling across complex networks - Emerging links between networks and control.
A. Clauset, H. G. Tanner, C. T. Abdallah and R. H. Byrne.
Annual Reviews in Control 32, 183 - 192 (2008). - The evolution and distribution of species body size.
A. Clauset and D. H. Erwin.
Science 321, 399 - 401 (2008). (free reprint via Science) - Hierarchical structure and the prediction of missing links in networks.
A. Clauset, C. Moore and M. E. J. Newman.
Nature 453, 98 - 101 (2008). (Download the code; Nature version) - On the Frequency of Severe Terrorist Attacks.
A. Clauset, M. Young and K. S. Gledistch.
Journal of Conflict Resolution 51(1), 58 - 88 (2007).
(First pre-print appeared online as physics/0502014 in Feburary 2005.) - Structural Inference of Hierarchies in Networks.
A. Clauset, C. Moore and M. E. J. Newman.
In E. M. Airoldi et al. (Eds.): ICML 2006 Ws, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 4503, 1 - 13. Springer-Verlag, Berlin Heidelberg (2007). - Scale Invariance in Road Networks.
V. Kalapala, V. Sanwalani, A. Clauset and C. Moore.
Physical Review E 73, 026130 (2006). - Molecular modeling of mono- and bis-quaternary ammonium salts as ligands at the a4b2 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor subtype using nonlinear techniques.
J. T. Ayers, A. Clauset, J. D. Schmitt, L. P. Dwoskin and P. A. Crooks.
American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists Journal 7(3), E678 - 85 (2005). - Supervised Self-Organizing Maps in QSAR I: Robust behavior with underdetermined datasets.
Y. D. Xiao, A. Clauset, R. Harris, E. Bayram, P. Santago II, and J. D. Schmitt.
Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling 45(6), 1749 - 1758 (2005). - Finding local community structure in networks.
A. Clauset.
Physical Review E 72, 026132 (2005). - On the bias of traceroute sampling; or, Power-law degree distributions in regular graphs.
D. Achlioptas, A Clauset, D. Kempe and C. Moore.
In Proc. 37th ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC) (Baltimore, May 2005). - Accuracy and Scaling Phenomena in Internet Mapping.
A. Clauset and C. Moore.
Physical Review Letters 94, 018701 (2005). - Finding community structure in very large networks.
A. Clauset, M. E. J. Newman and C. Moore.
Physical Review E 70, 066111 (2004). (Download the code.) - Genetic Algorithms and Self-Organizing Maps: A Powerful Combination for Modeling Complex QSAR and QSPR Problems.
E. Bayram, P. Santago II, R. Harris, Y. D. Xiao, A. Clauset and J. D. Schmitt.
Journal of Computer-Aided Molecular Design 18(7-9), 483 - 493 (2004).
Pre-prints
- Comment on Yu et al., 'High Quality Binary Protein Interaction Map of the Yeast Interactome Network.' Science 322, 104 (2008).
A. Clauset.
E-print, arXiv:0901.0530 (2009). - How do networks become navigable?
A. Clauset and C. Moore.
E-print, arXiv:cond-mat/0309415 (2003). - Chaos You Can Play In.
A. Clauset, N. Grigg, M. Lim and E. Miller.
In Proc. 2003 Santa Fe Institute Complex Systems Summer School (Santa Fe, July 2003).