What Happens in Washington, D.C. Stays in Washington, D.C.

I suppose that truer words were never written.

In any event, today I am heading off to Washington, D.C. to principal-investigator workshop that is related to a new NSF grant of mine.

On Thursday, I'll be giving a seminar in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at George Mason University. It will be Mason@Mason — a fixed point!

The Hungry Hungry Hippos Theory of Science Funding

The analogy definitely works...

This game looks like the classic Hungry Hungry Hippos but with different "graphics". (The version I had as a kid was not long after it first came out. I am pretty sure that I know where it is in my parents' house — which is a bit rare for my childhood stuff.)

Teaching the kids about science funding pic.twitter.com/rdwylryNly

— Christophe🔬Leterrier (@christlet) November 25, 2017

(Tip of the cap to Kevin O'Keeffe.)

What Happens in Brussels Stays in Brussels

I am now off to Brussels for the final grant review meeting for the PLEXMATH consortium.

What Happens in Brussels Stays in Brussels

Today I am flying to Brussels, where tomorrow we have our first-year grant review for our three-year PLEXMATH grant. I will return to Oxford tomorrow night, and then I (thankfully) don't have any flights until I return to the US on 20 December.

What Happens at the PLEXMATH Kickoff Meeting Stays at the PLEXMATH Kickoff Meeting

Miraculously, my visa renewal and passport arrived just in time for me to buy last-minute tickets to Spain for the PLEXMATH kickoff meeting in Tarragona. (I am flying into Barcelona and then taking ground transportation.) The itinerary is slightly convoluted and more expensive than is ideal, but that is what happens when buying plane tickets at the last minute, but it's great to actually be able to attend the kickoff meeting for our big grant. (I had long since assumed there was no chance I could attend, so this is awesome!)

Eventually, we will put some genuine content on the project's website. My project partners on this grant are Alex Arenas, Marc Barthelemy, James Gleeson, and Yamir Moreno.

Facebook and Voting

Check out this new paper that was just published in Nature about voter participation and Facebook friendships. It was a collaboration between Facebook Data team, my collaborator James Fowler (who is a political scientist by training), and others at UC San Diego.

This paper is in the process of making waves. For example, here is what the New York Times had to say about it in its article. By the way, the research for this paper was funded in part by a joint grant that James and I have from the James S. McDonnell Foundation, though please note that I was not part of this project. (I did read an early draft of this paper over 1.5 years ago and gave some comments on it, and that is the extent of my involvement.) It is really cool that we get to mention this paper in our report to the funding agency, though!

Money, Money, Money

I recently got some money to continue my research on network analysis in U.S. Congressional networks. This grant, which comes from the McDonnell Foundation's complex systems initiative, is joint with James Fowler of UC San Diego's political science department. The funds are awarded in units of Boeing stocks.