Talks | ICTS

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Monday, 10 March 2025
Time Speaker Title Resources
09:15 to 10:45 Jonathan Newton (Kyoto University, Japan) Non-cooperative game theory: players, strategies, payoffs and equilibrium

This lecture will introduce the fundamentals of non-cooperative game theory, including the definition of normal form games, the interpretation of payoffs and ideas of equilibrium.

11:15 to 12:45 Jonathan Newton (Kyoto University, Japan) Refinements and dynamics: the emergence of conventions

Equilibrium multiplicity throws up the question of which equilibria are plausible. How can we distinguish between them? We look to understanding equilibria as emergent properties of dynamic processes of behavioral change and consider some classic behavioral rules and applications, such as the best response rule and coordination problems.

14:15 to 15:45 Vivek S. Borkar (Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, India) Algorithms, dynamics and learning

Beginning with the intimate relationship between recursive algorithms and dynamical systems, I shall describe some common dynamics that serve as templates for `stateless' learning. This will be followed by reinforcement learning for dynamic systems, using Markov decision processes as a test case.

15:45 to 16:15 Sitabhra Sinha (Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai, India) Games, Networks and Self-Organization: Explaining the collective transition to social cooperation

The emergence of cooperation among selfish agents that have no incentive to cooperate is a non-trivial phenomenon that has long intrigued biologists, social scientists and physicists. The iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma (IPD) game provides a natural framework for investigating this phenomenon. The spatial version of IPD, where each agent interacts only with their nearest neighbors on a specified connection topology, has been used to  study the evolution of cooperation under conditions of bounded rationality. This talk will explorehow the collective behavior that arises from the simultaneous actions of the agents (implemented by synchronous update) is affected by the connection topology among the interacting agents. The system exhibits three types of collective states, viz., a pair of absorbing states (corresponding to all agents cooperating or defecting, respectively) and a fluctuating state characterized by agents switching intermittently between cooperation and defection. We show that the system exhibits a transition from one state to another simply by altering the connection topology from regular to random, without altering any of the parameters govering the game dynamics, such as temptation payoff or noise. Such topological phase transitions in collective behavior of strategic agents suggest important role that social structure may play in promoting cooperation.

16:45 to 17:15 - Poster
Tuesday, 11 March 2025
Time Speaker Title Resources
09:15 to 10:45 Jonathan Newton (Kyoto University, Japan) Conventions in theory and practice

We will consider further applications in game theory and economics, such as bargaining problems, coalitional processes, bounded rationality, matching problems, housing markets. More detail will be provided on useful tricks and techniques used to prove these kinds of results.

11:15 to 12:45 Christian Hilbe (IT:U Interdisciplinary Transformation University, Austria) Evolutionary game theory and the evolution of cooperation

In a series of four lectures, I give an introduction to evolutionary game theory and the literature on the evolution of cooperation. This series covers
(i) Evolutionary game theory in infinite and finite populations (Replicator dynamics, Moran process);
(ii) Evolution of cooperation and direct reciprocity
(iii) Social norms and the evolution of indirect reciprocity
(iv) Some current research directions (e.g., direct reciprocity in complex environments).

14:15 to 15:45 Vivek S. Borkar (Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, India) Markov Decision Processes

Beginning with the intimate relationship between recursive algorithms and dynamical systems, I shall describe some common dynamics that serve as templates for `stateless' learning. This will be followed by reinforcement learning for dynamic systems, using Markov decision processes as a test case.

15:45 to 16:15 Vishwesha Guttal (Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India) Eco-Evolutionary Dynamics for Finite Populations and the Noise-Induced Reversal of Selection

Theoretical studies from diverse areas of population biology have shown that demographic stochasticity can substantially impact evolutionary dynamics in finite populations, including scenarios where traits that are disfavored by natural selection can nevertheless increase in frequency through the course of evolution. Here, we analytically describe the eco-evolutionary dynamics of finite populations from demographic first principles. We investigate how noise-induced effects can alter the evolutionary fate of populations in which total population size may vary stochastically over time. Starting from a generic birth-death process, we derive a set of stochastic differential equations (SDEs) that describe the eco-evolutionary dynamics of a finite population of individuals bearing discrete traits. Our equations recover well-known descriptions of evolutionary dynamics, such as the replicator-mutator equation, the Price equation, and Fisher’s fundamental theorem in the infinite population limit. For finite populations, our SDEs reveal how stochasticity can predictably bias evolutionary trajectories to favor certain traits, a phenomenon we call “noise-induced biasing.” We show that noise-induced biasing acts through two distinct mechanisms, which we call the “direct” and “indirect” mechanisms. While the direct mechanism can be identified with classic bet-hedging theory, the indirect mechanism is a more subtle consequence of frequency- and density-dependent demographic stochasticity. Our equations reveal that noise-induced biasing may lead to evolution proceeding in a direction opposite to that predicted by natural selection in the infinite population limit. By extending and generalizing some standard equations of population genetics, we thus describe how demographic stochasticity appears alongside, and interacts with, the more well-understood forces of natural selection and neutral drift to determine the eco-evolutionary dynamics of finite populations of nonconstant size (ref: Bhat and Guttal, 2025, American Naturalist, doi: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/733196)

16:45 to 17:15 Arjun Ramakrishnan (Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India) Impact of Social Dynamics on Group Foraging

Cooperation is vital in both human and animal behavior, allowing individuals to achieve goals that would be difficult alone, such as hunting large, elusive prey. This cooperation has been integral to the evolution of conformity and group norms. However, it is unclear whether individuals conform primarily to acquire valuable information (informational conformity) or to blend in with the group (normative compliance), and under what conditions each form of conformity is exhibited. The degree of conformity may depend on factors like the nature of the activity, an individual’s expertise, and the reward structure. In activities such as foraging, where individuals often exhibit nearly optimal behaviors, one might expect informational conformity, as foragers likely know what is best for them. However, whether individuals conform in this way or are motivated by the desire to conform to group norms remains uncertain. This question forms the basis of our study. While patch foraging has been well studied in both wild and lab settings, most research has focused on individual foraging behavior, overlooking the role of group dynamics. In patchy environments, animals and humans typically behave in ways that align with the Marginal Value Theorem (MVT), but little attention has been given to how group foraging might influence individual behavior. Can suboptimal foragers influence others, leading to less optimal group outcomes? This study explores the social dynamics of group foraging through a novel task, examining whether collective behavior can lead individuals away from optimal foraging, indicating normative conformity. Additionally, our research aims to develop process-level models of learning and decision-making, enhancing our understanding of the mechanisms underlying conformity in group foraging.

17:15 to 17:45 Srinivas Arigapudi (Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India) Stable Mixing in Hawk–Dove Games under Best Experienced Payoff Dynamics

The hawk–dove game admits two types of equilibria: an asymmetric pure equilibrium, in which players in one population play “hawk” and players in the other population play “dove,” and a symmetric mixed equilibrium, in which hawks are frequently matched against each other. The existing literature shows that when two populations of agents are randomly matched to play the hawk–dove game, then there is convergence to one of the pure equilibria from almost any initial state. By contrast, we show that plausible dynamics, in which agents occasionally revise their actions based on the payoffs obtained in a few trials, often give rise to the opposite result: convergence to one of the interior stationary states.

Wednesday, 12 March 2025
Time Speaker Title Resources
09:15 to 10:45 Christian Hilbe (IT:U Interdisciplinary Transformation University, Austria) Evolutionary game theory and the evolution of cooperation

In a series of four lectures, I give an introduction to evolutionary game theory and the literature on the evolution of cooperation. This series covers
(i) Evolutionary game theory in infinite and finite populations (Replicator dynamics, Moran process);
(ii) Evolution of cooperation and direct reciprocity
(iii) Social norms and the evolution of indirect reciprocity
(iv) Some current research directions (e.g., direct reciprocity in complex environments).

11:15 to 12:45 Vivek S. Borkar (Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, India) Reinforcement Learning

Beginning with the intimate relationship between recursive algorithms and dynamical systems, I shall describe some common dynamics that serve as templates for `stateless' learning. This will be followed by reinforcement learning for dynamic systems, using Markov decision processes as a test case.

14:15 to 15:45 Christian Hilbe (IT:U Interdisciplinary Transformation University, Austria) Evolutionary game theory and the evolution of cooperation

In a series of four lectures, I give an introduction to evolutionary game theory and the literature on the evolution of cooperation. This series covers
(i) Evolutionary game theory in infinite and finite populations (Replicator dynamics, Moran process);
(ii) Evolution of cooperation and direct reciprocity
(iii) Social norms and the evolution of indirect reciprocity
(iv) Some current research directions (e.g., direct reciprocity in complex environments).

15:45 to 16:15 Parongama Sen (University of Calcutta, Kolkata, India) Generalized q voter model with 2 parameters

The q-voter model has been extensively studied in the context of decision making. However, the impact of an individual's current opinion on their future stance has been largely overlooked. To fill this gap, we introduce a generalized model in which an agent's opinion depends not only on its neighbors but also on its own state. As in the original q-voter model, a unanimous influence group of size q causes the agent to adopt the group's opinion. However, if the group is not unanimous, the agent will change its opinion with a probability influenced by its current state. This introduces a bias toward a choice that reflects external factors such as politics or advertising. The model generalizes previous q-voter models, including the original one, while allowing for a wider range of scenarios.

16:45 to 17:15 Ashish Ranjan Hota (Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India) Interplay of Strategic Decision Making and Spread of Epidemics

Infectious diseases or epidemics spread through human society via social interactions among infected and healthy individuals. In this talk, we explore the coupled evolution of the epidemic and protection adoption behavior of humans.

In the first part of the talk, we focus on the class of susceptible-infected-susceptible (SIS) epidemic model where individuals choose whether to adopt protection or not based on the trade-off between the cost of adopting protection and the risk of infection; the latter depends on the current prevalence of the epidemic and the fraction of individuals who adopt protection in the entire population. We define the coupled epidemic-behavioral dynamics by modeling the evolution of individual protection adoption behavior according to the replicator dynamics. We fully characterize the equilibria and their stability properties. We further analyze the coupled dynamics under timescale separation when individual behavior evolves faster than the epidemic, and characterize the equilibria of the resulting discontinuous hybrid dynamical system. Numerical results illustrate how the coupled dynamics exhibits oscillatory behavior and convergence to sliding mode solutions under suitable parameter regimes.

In the second part of the talk, we discuss a dynamic population game model to capture individual behavior against susceptible-asymptomatic-infected-recovered (SAIR) epidemic model. Each node chooses whether to activate (i.e., interact with others), how many other individuals to interact with, and which zone to move to in a time-scale which is comparable with the epidemic evolution. We define and analyze the notion of equilibrium in this game, and investigate the transient behavior of the epidemic spread in a range of numerical case studies, providing insights on the effects of the agents' degree of future awareness, strategic migration decisions, as well as different levels of lockdown and other interventions.

17:15 to 17:45 Ratul Lahkar (Ashoka University, Haryana, India) The Best Experienced Payoff Dynamic in the Ultimatum Minigame

In the ultimatum minigame, proposers can offer either half the total prize or just 1. Responders can accept or reject. At the subgame perfect equilibrium, proposers offer 1 and responders accept. We apply the best experienced payoff (BEP) dynamic to the large population version of this game. The BEP dynamic is generated when players try their strategies a certain number of times and choose the strategy that generates the highest average payoff. We establish conditions under which the subgame perfect equilibrium is stable or unstable. If it is unstable, another stable state can arise where a significant fraction of proposers make high offers.

Thursday, 13 March 2025
Time Speaker Title Resources
09:15 to 10:45 Christian Hilbe (IT:U Interdisciplinary Transformation University, Austria) Evolutionary game theory and the evolution of cooperation

In a series of four lectures, I give an introduction to evolutionary game theory and the literature on the evolution of cooperation. This series covers
(i) Evolutionary game theory in infinite and finite populations (Replicator dynamics, Moran process);
(ii) Evolution of cooperation and direct reciprocity
(iii) Social norms and the evolution of indirect reciprocity
(iv) Some current research directions (e.g., direct reciprocity in complex environments).

11:15 to 12:45 K. M. Sharika (Online) + 3 postdocs (IIT Kanpur) Physiological predictors of social interaction outcomes
14:15 to 15:45 Jonathan Newton (Kyoto University, Japan) The evolution of collaboration
15:45 to 16:15 Debashish Chowdhury (DIT University, Dehradun, India) Individual and Collective Decisions of Social Insects: Movement, Mind and Migration

The behavior of social insects, like ants and termites, is fascinating not only to children but also from the perspective of researchers in several disciplines. In recent years the mechanisms of collective decisions of ants under a variety of situations have attracted the attention of physicists. In this talk I will present a brief overview of the individual and collective decisions of ants (a) during transport of a "large" cargo, (b) in a "traffic" on trails, and (c) while selecting a new site for "migration" of the colony.

16:45 to 17:15 Deepa Agashe (National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore, India) Evolution and effects of decision-making in an insect

Animals in the natural world face many choices, and their decisions with respect to food and habitat have major consequences for their fitness. Many factors influence these behavioural decisions, including the ecological and life history context of individuals. I will present our work analysing how females of a cosmopolitan and generalist pest — the red flour beetle Tribolium castaneum — choose where and how to lay eggs. When presented with a choice of an optimal (wheat flour) vs. a non-optimal resource (finger millet), females sometimes allocate more eggs in finger millet. However, we find that this preference depends on their age and density context, and is tuned to optimize distinct fitness components for their offspring, likely mediated via differential nutrient provisioning. During laboratory evolution in wheat-finger millet habitats, the founder female context also determines evolutionary changes in decision-making, though these maternal effects decline over time. Importantly, founder context also influenced population size and the effect of an inadvertent parasitic infection in our experiment. Our work highlights the role of ecological context in driving female decision-making, and demonstrates some wide-ranging effects of founder context on adaptation and trait evolution.

17:15 to 17:45 Pavan Tallapragada (IISc, Bengaluru, India) Opinion dynamics for agents with resource limitations

We present a model of opinion formation game resource limited utility-maximizing agents interacting over a social network. The opinion dynamics is the result of each agent simultaneously revising its opinion by gradient ascent of its utility function. We analyze the evolution of opinions, including boundedness of opinions, convergence to an equilibrium and oscillatory behavior. In some special cases, we comment on the relative dominance of the agents on the steady state opinions. We also establish connections to Nash equilibria and prices of anarchy.

Bio: Pavan Tallapragada is an Associate Prof. in the Robert Bosch Centre for Cyber Physical Systems at the Indian Institute of Science. His research interests are broadly in multi-agent systems and control, including in multi-robot control, multi-agent reinforcement learning and dynamics of social systems.

Monday, 17 March 2025
Time Speaker Title Resources
09:15 to 10:45 Cailin O'Connor (University of California, Irvine, USA) Why Social Contracts Are Not Fair

Many theorists have employed game theory to model the emergence of stable social norms, or natural “social contracts.” One branch of this literature uses bargaining games to show why many societies have norms and rules for fairness. In cultural evolutionary models, fair bargaining emerges endogenously because it is an efficient way to divide resources. But these models miss an important element of real human societies – divisions into groups or social categories. Once such groups are added to cultural evolutionary models, fairness is no longer the expected outcome.  Instead “discriminatory norms” often emerge where one group systematically gets more when dividing resources. I show why the addition of categories to bargaining models leads to unfairness, and discuss the role of power us in this process. I also address how categories might emerge to support inequity, and the possibility of modeling social change. Altogether this work emphasizes that if one wishes to understand the naturalistic emergence of social contracts, one must account for the presence of categorical divisions, and unfairness, as well as for norms of fairness.

11:15 to 12:45 James O. Weatherall (University of California, Irvine, USA) An Introduction to Epistemic Networks
This talk will introduce the Bala-Goyal model of epistemic networks, where agents on a network learn to solve a decision problem by performing actions and sharing the results of those actions with their neighbors.  We will discuss the conditions under which agents on these networks successfully learn to perform optimal outcomes, and how network structure can influence time to convergence and accuracy.
14:15 to 15:45 Chaitanya Gokhale (University of Wurzburg and MPI Plon, Germany) Introduction to Multiplayer Evolutionary Games (MEGs)

Multiplayer Evolutionary Games (MEGs) extend classical evolutionary game theory by incorporating interactions among multiple participants rather than just two. This lecture introduces MEGs and their foundational connection to population genetics and their evolutionary dynamics. Theoretical principles such as fitness, selection, and mutation are explored, illustrating how MEGs capture non-linear interaction effects. The importance of higher-order interactions is emphasized, demonstrating how MEGs naturally extend traditional evolutionary models to more complex, real-world scenarios.

15:45 to 16:15 Sandeep Krishna (National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore, India) Optimising dormancy vs. virulence decisions in bacteriophage
Bacteriophages are the most abundant organisms on the planet and play key roles as shapers of ecosystems and drivers of bacterial evolution. Temperate phages can choose between (i) lysis: exploiting their bacterial hosts to produce multiple offspring phage and releasing them by lysing the host cell, and (ii) lysogeny: establishing a mutually beneficial relationship with the host by integrating their chromosome into the host cell’s genome. I will describe how we combine dynamical systems and game theory to model the  competition of phage mutants that have different lysogeny propensities. We find that there is a narrow range of optimal propensity values that phages can evolve, and this predicted range covers the values observed for various phage species. Our results also offer an explanation for why temperate phages tend to utilize bistable switches that can incorporate the number of infecting phage into the lysis-lysogeny decision. If there is time, I will describe other work that examines the range of network structures that can produce such functionality.
16:45 to 17:45 - Poster
Tuesday, 18 March 2025
Time Speaker Title Resources
09:15 to 10:45 James O. Weatherall (University of California, Irvine, USA) Polarization and Factionalization

Here we extend the Bala-Goyal framework to include differential levels of trust.  We will discuss how this modification might be used to model groups of scientists making judgments about the reliability of one another's work, and show how introducing trust dynamics can both slow learning and, in some cases, lead to stably polarized outcomes.  We will also discuss how agents learning over multiple domains can come to form epistemic factions, where unrelated beliefs become correlated.

11:15 to 12:45 Cailin O'Connor (University of California, Irvine, USA) Evolving a Gendered Division of Labor

All known human societies use gender to divide labor.  Extant game theoretic models in economics explain this division via appeal to rational predictions of what skill specializations will yield success in "marriage markets".  In this talk I argue that these high rationality assumptions are neither necessary nor appropriate in explaining gendered division of labor.  I use cultural evolutionary models to show how natural processes of learning and symmetry breaking predict and explain gendered division of labor.

14:15 to 15:45 Chaitanya Gokhale (University of Wurzburg and MPI Plon, Germany) Long-Term Dynamics of Multiplayer Evolutionary Games

This lecture examines the long-term behaviour of MEGs, focusing on fixation probabilities, fixation times, and stochastic slowdowns. It explores key questions such as if, when, and how a strategy persists in the long run. The transition from static equilibrium analysis to dynamic evolution is discussed, incorporating concepts like mutation-selection equilibrium, the 1/3 rule, risk dominance, and their generalisations to multiplayer settings. Additionally, the role of multiplayer games in mutualism is highlighted, showing how cooperative interactions persist over time in an ecological framework.

15:45 to 16:15 Sumana Annagiri (Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Kolkata, India) Decision making – contexts and outcomes in the case of ants

In this general talk, we will look at the decisions that ants need to make in their day-to-day activities, by following their behaviours. Decisions in the context of stealing, learning, traffic jams and colony relocation using the model organisms Diacamma indicum a commonly found black ant in the Indian subcontinent. We will glimpse into both individual decisions and collective decisions made by these organisms. With a combination of control lab-based experiments and observations in the nature habitat we develop an understanding of the implications these decisions have on their survival and fitness.

16:45 to 17:15 Supreet Saini (Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, India) Public-goods driven evolution of cheater-cooperator populations in yeast.

In evolutionary game theory, a relative comparison of the cost and benefit associated with obtaining a resource, called payoff, is used as an
indicator of fitness of an organism. Payoffs of different strategies, quantitatively represented as payoff matrices, are used to understand complex inter-species and intra-species interactions like cooperation, mutualism, and altruism. Payoff matrices, however, are usually treated as invariant with time —largely due to the absence of any empirical data quantifying their evolution. In this talk, I will present empirical evidence of three types of resource-dependent changes in the payoff matrices of evolving Saccharomyces cerevisiae populations. Our results show that depending on the carbon source and participating genotypes, N-player games could collapse, be born, or be maintained.

17:15 to 17:45 Vaibhav Madhok (Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India) -
Wednesday, 19 March 2025
Time Speaker Title Resources
09:15 to 10:45 Chaitanya Gokhale (University of Wurzburg and MPI Plon, Germany) Higher-Order Interactions and Social Evolution

Expanding beyond traditional evolutionary games, this lecture discusses higher-order interactions in ecology and their connection to evolutionary dynamics. The mathematical connection between Lotka-Volterra dynamics and replicator equations is explored, illustrating how ecological and evolutionary processes interlink even in higher dimensions. Moving to social systems, we discuss the evolution of collective beliefs and trust, providing insights into the role of MEGs in shaping human social structures.

These lectures underscore the versatility of MEGs in explaining the complex nature of both natural selection and cultural evolution.

11:15 to 12:45 Silvia De Monte (CNRS, IBENS, France) The eco-evolutionary dynamics of populations that self-organize into groups

Collective functions are typically evaluated at the level of groups of agents, and group structure is important for understanding the impact of heterogeneity-induced conflicts. If mathematical models often assume that group form independently of the agents' strategies, in nature group formation and group function commonly depend on the same set of traits.

In this lecture, I will address different models where the ecological and evolutionary dynamics are coupled through the process of group formation, and discuss their relevance to the evolution of aggregative multicellularity.

14:15 to 15:45 Wenying Shou (University College London, UK) The Survival of the Most Cooperative
15:45 to 16:15 Kavita Jain (Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Bangalore, India) Neutral genetic diversity in changing environments
16:45 to 17:15 Samit Bhattacharyya (Shiv Nadar University, Noida, India) Malaria Elimination In Sub-Saharan Africa: An Evolutionary Game Perspective

The 2021 WHO Malaria Report revealed that most Sub-Saharan African countries fell short of the 2020 Global Technical Strategy (GTS) targets, largely due to inconsistent use of insecticide-treated nets (ITNs) driven by various socioeconomic factors.

This research talk leverages data from 38 SSA countries and game-theoretic models to uncover key patterns and emerging trends in malaria control. By analyzing historical data and generating optimized projections, the study identifies critical barriers—including economic constraints, behavioural resistance, and declining ITN efficacy—that contributed to these shortfalls. It also provides country-specific recommendations on the likelihood of achieving the GTS 2025 and 2030 goals.

Simulated intervention scenarios highlight actionable strategies, particularly the role of public-sector engagement in subsidizing ITN distribution to mitigate financial barriers for vulnerable populations. Additionally, using the Cobb-Douglas production model, the study demonstrates how integrated strategies can enhance donor-funded efforts and promote long-term economic sustainability within malaria elimination programs.

This talk will emphasize the necessity of aligning public health interventions with economic policies to sustain high ITN coverage and accelerate progress toward malaria eradication.

17:15 to 17:45 Partha Sarathi Dutta (Indian Institute of Technology, Ropar, India) Mitigating ecological tipping points via game–environment feedback

Widespread exploitation of biological resources raises concerns about the emergence of tipping points characterizing abrupt ecosystem collapse. Mitigating these tipping points is crucial for the sustainability of our being. However, our understanding of how the feedback loop between human exploitation strategies and the environment influences the mechanisms governing these tipping points remains elusive. This study employs an eco-evolutionary game-theoretic framework to explore the coupled dynamics of a renewable resource undergoing a sudden collapse. We investigate the co-evolution of strategic interactions and environmental dynamics using six possible game combinations representing diverse social dilemmas.

We find that, depending on the choice of environment-dependent payoff structure, the tipping point can be shifted or even completely eluded. Additionally, this study emphasizes the impact of monitoring and punishment mechanisms against high-effort exploitation strategists on the system’s resilience. Our results unveil a rich spectrum of dynamics, spanning from multistability to oscillation, thereby presenting formidable challenges to resource management. While addressing the tragedy of the commons resulting from heightened harvesting efforts, targeted penalties for high-effort strategists emerge as a mitigating factor. Overall, our study highlights the interplay between ecological tipping points, individual decision-making, and external control mechanisms within the realm of resource management.

Thursday, 20 March 2025
Time Speaker Title Resources
09:15 to 10:45 Silvia De Monte (CNRS, IBENS, France) The ecological underpinning of evolutionary conflicts in social amoebae

The facultatively multicellular amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum is a model system for studying the transition from unicellular to multicellular organization. It is a remarkable example of microbes with aggregative life cycles, which evolved multiple times independently in distant taxa. A key feature of such cycles is that multicellular aggregates can contain cells that are genetically different, and are therefore subjected to a high degree of conflict.

I will discuss different solutions that have been proposed to account for the evolutionary persistence of such apparently paradoxical life cycles. In particular, in the light of recent experimental results, I will address the link between proximate causes, rooted in single-cell mechanics, and ultimate causation. I will also show how agent-based and eco-evolutionary models can be used to understand the role of heterogeneous motility in the evolution of aggregative life cycles.

11:15 to 12:45 Wenying Shou (University College London, UK) -
14:15 to 15:45 Silvia De Monte (CNRS, IBENS, France) Models for the artificial selection of communities

Biological communities are endowed with properties, such as diversity, primary production, or total biomass, that have ecological relevance. The possibility that such properties are shaped by natural selection has been tested by experimentally selecting microbial communities based on some collective function.

I will discuss different models for artificial community selection and discuss in particular its effect on species traits, notably on the interaction parameters.

15:45 to 16:15 Puduru Viswanadha Reddy (Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India) Guaranteed cost equilibrium strategies for the control of networked multi-agent systems

The study of multi-agent systems (MAS) and related control architectures is becoming increasingly popular in emerging engineering systems such as power grids, multi-robot systems, IoT (Internet of Things) systems, and sensor networks. These systems are large-scale and characterized by multiple interdependent decision-making entities, or agents, that are networked and heterogeneous.

This work focuses on the distributed control of networked MAS with linear time-invariant dynamics and quadratic performance measures. Since the MAS is networked, each agent has access only to the state information of its neighbors, also referred to as the local or output feedback information structure. Consequently, full-state feedback controllers are not implementable.

Using a game-theoretic framework, we model the distributed control problem as a networked differential game. We illustrate that verifying the existence of an output feedback Nash equilibrium is challenging due to structural constraints imposed by the network topology. To address this, we develop the notion of an output feedback guaranteed cost equilibrium. These equilibrium controllers ensure an upper bound on individual agent costs while maintaining an equilibrium property.

We derive several properties of these equilibrium strategies and provide linear matrix inequality-based conditions for their existence, along with an algorithm for synthesizing them. Finally, we demonstrate the performance of the proposed equilibrium strategies through numerical experiments.

(joint work with Aniruddha Roy).

16:45 to 17:15 Sayantari Ghosh (National Institute of Technology, Durgapur, India) A Survey is All You Need: Deriving Quantitative models from Open-ended Responses

 In this era of omnipresent social media, social contagions are becoming a growing matter of interest. Our work integrates insights from systematic survey data, the tool of choice for social opinion exploration, with computational models to demonstrate a novel framework for deriving compartmental models from open-ended questions. By analyzing free-form survey responses and qualitative narratives, we systematically map individual opinions and behaviors into discrete compartments that mirror the stages of influence and adoption observed in various peer influenced dynamics, like public health and marketing campaigns. In the vaccine perception domain, respondents’ descriptions of peer interactions and protective behavior are classified into states analogous to susceptible, influenced, and resistant, capturing the dynamics of opinion formation and behavioral change. Similarly, in the referral marketing scenario, open-ended responses reveal latent engagement stages that inform a compartmental structure reflective of awareness, participation, and advocacy. Our quantitative treatment shows that these data-driven compartments can be effectively incorporated into dynamical systems models, giving rise to interesting opinion diffusion patterns. The proposed framework not only bridges qualitative insights with rigorous mathematical modeling but also highlights the broader applicability of compartmental approaches in deciphering complex social processes from open-ended inquiry.

Friday, 21 March 2025
Time Speaker Title Resources
09:15 to 10:45 Wenying Shou (University College London, UK) -
11:15 to 12:45 James O. Weatherall (University of California, Irvine, USA) Conformity

The talk will discuss a different modification to the Bala-Goyal framework.  Here agents form beliefs based on their own experience and that of their neighbors, just like in the base model.  But they do not always perform the action they believe is best.  Instead, they weigh their expected payoff from taking a given action against their preference for conforming with their neighbors.  This modification leads to several new effects, including a different way in which polarization may arise, this time due to network structure.  We will conclude by reflecting on what it means that there are multiple, apparently distinct ways in which polarization can arise in simple models. 

14:15 to 15:45 Cailin O'Connor (University of California, Irvine, USA) Signaling, Fairness, and Social Categories

Philosophers and economists have used cultural evolutionary models of bargaining to understand issues related to fairness and justice, and especially how fair and unfair conventions and norms might arise in human societies. One line of this research shows how the presence of social categories in such models allows for inequitable equilibria that are not possible in models without social categories. This is taken to help explain why in human groups with social categories inequity is often the rule rather than the exception. But in previous models, it is typically assumed that these categories are rigid, easily observable, and binary. In reality, social categories are not always so tidy. We introduce evolutionary models where the tags connected with social categories can be flexible, variable, or difficult to observe, i.e., where these tags can carry different amounts of information about group membership. We show how alterations to these tags can undermine the stability of unfair conventions. We argue that these results can inform projects intended to ameliorate inequity, especially projects that seek to alter the properties of category markers.

15:45 to 16:15 Akshit Goyal (International Centre for Theoretical Sciences, Bangalore, India) -