Congratulations to Emilio Ferrara for winning the 2016 Junior Scientific Award from the Complex Systems Society (CCS), which unveiled the winners of the  CSS scientific awards in a packed plenary session at ECCS’16 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Quoting the nomination:

Emilio Ferrara is one of the most active and successful young researchers in the field of computational social sciences. His works include the design and application of novel network-science models, algorithms, and tools to study phenomena occurring in large, dynamical techno-social systems. They improved our understanding of the structure of large online social networks and the dynamics of information diffusion. He has explored online social phenomena (protests, rumors, etc.), with applications to model and forecast individual behaviour, and characterise information diffusion and cyber-crime.

We could not agree more. From 2012 to 2015 Emilio was a member of CNetS and IUNI, and a close research collaborator of our faculty and students. He recently moved at USC, where he is currently a Research Assistant Professor at the Information Sciences Institute. We miss him as both a colleague and a friend.