SFI External Professor Laurent Hébert-Dufresne (University of Vermont) has been named the 2026 recipient of the Young Scientist Award for Socio- and Econophysics by the German Physical Society (DPG). The annual award, organized by DPG's Physics of Socio-Economic Systems Division, celebrates “outstanding original contributions that use physical methods to develop a better understanding of socio-economic problems” by an early-career researcher under the age of 40. DPG will present the honor, which is sponsored by Capital Fund Management, to Hébert-Dufresne at the society’s Spring Meeting of the Condensed Matter Section in Dresden on March 10.
Hébert-Dufresne, a former postdoctoral fellow at SFI, is now a professor at UVM’s Vermont Complex Systems Institute, where he studies how phenomena spread across biological, social, and technological systems. His work explores questions that range from infectious disease transmission to the dissemination of ideas and behaviors.
SFI Professor Sid Redner nominated Hébert-Dufresne for the award, praising his “incisiveness in formulating and solving new models of complex contagions that incorporate the interplay between structure and dynamics, nonlinear spreading mechanisms, and self-reinforcement.” Redner, a longtime collaborator and mentor, co-authored a recent study led by Hébert-Dufresne. The paper reflects Hébert-Dufresne's broader focus on the interplay between structure and dynamics in complex systems, writes the University of Vermont.
In addition to this international recognition, Hébert-Dufresne holds a lifetime appointment as an Outstanding Referee by the American Physical Society, affiliations at the Complexity Science Hub in Vienna and l’Université Laval in Québec, and is Editor-in-Chief of npj Complexity, a new journal dedicated to interdisciplinary research that transcends traditional scientific boundaries.
Hébert-Dufresne joins SFI External Professor Mason Porter (UCLA), the 2016 awardee, as a recipient of the Young Scientist Award for Socio- and Econophysics.