Michele Coscia

Michele Coscia is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the IT University of Copenhagen (ITU), where he conducts research at the intersection of network science, digital humanities, and data analytics. He leads the NERDS research group and supervises PhD students and postdoctoral researchers working on financial crime detection, archaeological networks, and work environment modeling.

• PhD in Computer Science, University of Pisa (2012)
• Former researcher at the Center for International Development (CID), Harvard University (6 years)
• Visiting researcher at Barabási Lab, Northeastern University

His research focuses on developing and applying network science methodologies such as noise-corrected backboning, node attribute analysis, and network variance to study complex systems. His work spans diverse domains including:

• Archaeology: Inferring social and biological relationships from material culture at Neolithic sites like Çatalhöyük.
• Cultural Analytics: Mapping Italian music networks, analyzing Wikipedia’s gender bias, and studying ideological polarization on social media.
• Social Media Dynamics: Investigating meritocracy vs. topocracy, intolerance feedback loops, and information virality on platforms like Reddit and Twitter.
• Sports Analytics: Analyzing predictability trends in team sports and the impact of economic systems on league competitiveness.

His publications appear in high-impact journals such as Science Advances, EPJ Data Science, and Applied Network Science. He is the author of The Atlas for the Aspiring Network Scientist, a comprehensive open-access textbook now in its second edition, which covers graph theory, machine learning on graphs, and statistical foundations of network analysis.

Recent trends in his work show a growing emphasis on interdisciplinary applications of network science, particularly in archaeology and cultural studies, often in collaboration with institutions such as Aarhus University and the National Research Center for Work Environment. His research consistently promotes open science, with datasets and code publicly shared.

• Co-PI on a Villum Synergy project applying network analysis to Roman Empire archaeological data
• Active contributor to the CUDAN (Cultural Data Analytics) community
• Developing methods for uncertain and incomplete network data

Michele Coscia’s work demonstrates a strong commitment to methodological innovation and real-world impact across the humanities, social sciences, and computational domains.