Nicolò joined the Social Computing Group as a Lecturer of the “Social Computing” course in February 2021, and as Post-Doctoral Researcher in May 2021. 

In April 2021, he received his Ph.D. from ETH Zürich advised by Prof. Florian Dörfler, defending his dissertation titled “Modelling, Analysis, and Inference in Social Network Formation”.

Nicolò also holds a M.Sc. in Computational Science and Engineering from EPF Lausanne, a B. Sc. in Applied Mathematics from Politecnico di Torino (Italy), and he worked in the Computational Fluid-dynamics domain as software engineer and research consultant at Ascomp AG, a spin-off of ETH Zürich.

CV (PDF, 451 KB)

Nicolò’s research focus can be found at the intersection between Social Networks and Human/AI Decision Making, where he works on mathematical modeling, complex systems, and data science. In his approach, Nicolò tries to bridge the gap between the social and engineering sciences, using a unifying mathematical framework. Two of his recent works have been published in Nature Communications.

More broadly speaking, Nicolò is interested in Complex Social and Engineering systems and in problems that correspond to significant societal challenges, with an emphasis on areas such as autonomous systems, energy systems, finance, social networks, urban systems, and their underlying interconnections.

• Ionescu S, Pagan N, Hannak A. Individual Fairness for Social Media Influencers. Forthcoming in 11th International Conference on Complex Networks and their Applications 2022.
• Pagan N, Mei W, Li C, Dörfler F. A meritocratic network formation model for the rise of social media influencers. Nature Communications. 2021 Nov 30;12(1):1-2.
• Pagan N, Dörfler F. Game theoretical inference of human behavior in social networks. Nature communications. 2019 Dec 3;10(1):1-2.

• 2021: Lecturer of the Social Computing course.

• Fairness-efficiency trade-off in ride-hailing services
• Closed-loop between Opinion Dynamics and Recommender Systems
• Re-Tweetted or Re-tweeeter: who benefits the most?

See the full list here.

• 05/2022 - present. Maria Helena Margareta Pelli and Andrianos Michail, University of Zürich. Master Project: “A longitudinal study of emotions on Twitter chains of re-tweets”.
• 03/2022 - 07/2022.  Jules Authier, ETH Zürich. Semester Project: “Analysis of the Closed-Loop between Recommender Systems and Opinion Dynamics”

• 06-2021 - 11/2021. Michael Blum, University of Zürich. Bachelor Thesis: “Learning and success in chess: the role of openings patterns”.