Caterina A. M. La Porta
Università degli Studi di Milano

Bio: Caterina A. M. La Porta is professor of general pathology, group leader of the Oncolab Laboratory (www.oncolab.it) of the Department of Environmental Science and Policy and member of the steering committee of the Center for Complexity and Biosystems (www.complexitybiosistems.it), of the Innovation For Well-Being And Environment  Center and of the  Center for Molecular chemio-prevention (CMCP) of chronic degenerative diseases  (CDS) at the University of Milan.  She is also the coordinator of the interdisciplinary laboratory  “Integrative approach for Global Health” since 2022. Prof. La Porta is included in the list of the World’s Top 2% Cited Scientists 2023 by Stanford University. She spent many periods abroad collaborating with many international universities and research institutes including MIT, Cornell University, the Weizmann Institute of Science, Aalto University and LMU In Germany. In 2017, she was selected among the “100 experts” the top women scientists in Italy  (https://100esperte.it/).  She was trained as a general pathologist and cell biologist and spent most of her career trying to understand basic phenomena in biological sciences, initially in neuroscience and later on in cancer using molecular biology and cell biology approaches. The main focus of her group is to understand cancer heterogeneity and in particular melanoma and breast cancer, one of the most aggressive tumors. In the last fifteen years, she shifted her interests to quantitative biology and digital medicine. She studied the emergent properties of cancer by developing algorithms able to catch quantitatively the dynamics of the complex regulatory networks of the cell (Ariadne, Stella). She published more than 150 publications contributing to the fields of digital medicine, cancer plasticity, computational biology, system biology, neuroscience, biophysics and biomaterials. In 2017, she wrote a textbook on the “Physics of Cancer” published by Cambridge University Press. A natural consequence of her work on cancer heterogeneity with big data has been the birth of the spinoff and innovative startup COMPLEXDATA in June 2018, where she serves as CEO and president of the governing board.

Antoine Parent,
Université Paris -Université Paris 8 – Sciences Po, Paris – Cliometrics And Complexity, Institut des Systèmes Complexes, Lyon

Bio: Antoine Parent is a full professor of economics at the University of Paris 8 (LED) and affiliate researcher at OFCE Sciences Po (Observatoire Français des Conjonctures Economiques). His fields of research are in cliometrics and complexity economics. He is the founding director of Team Cliometrics and Complexity (CAC), launched in 2014 and hosted by the Complex Systems Institute Lyon. Team CAC was created to foster interdisciplinary collaboration in the modeling of historical macroeconomic and financial data and to stimulate new approaches to economic history by drawing inspiration from other disciplines, most notably complex systems modeling in physics, econophysics, mathematics, signal processing, and data analytics. He was a member of the Committee on Research in Economic History of the Economic History Association from 2020–2022 and chair in 2022. He is a member of the board and professor in Cliometrics and Complexity at the Doctoral School Circular Economy, Università degli studi di Trieste.

Stefano Zapperi
Università degli Studi di Milano

Bio: Stefano Zapperi is currently professor of theoretical condensed matter physics at the University of Milano and coordinator of the Center for Complexity and Biosystems. He graduated in physics at the University of Rome “La Sapienza” and received his Ph. D. in physics from Boston University. After a postdoctoral position at ESPCI in Paris, he became tenured researcher at INFM at the University Rome and then at the University Modena and Reggio Emilia. He became then senior researcher at CNR-IENI in Milano. He has been invited as visiting scientist or visiting professor in many institutions worldwide, including Cornell University, Aalto University, ENS Paris and Lyon, Boston College, Rice University, FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg, LMU Munich and the Weizmann Institute of Science. Prof. Zapperi in an expert in the statistical physics of complex systems and has contributed to the fields of materials science, biophysics and systems biology. His most notable contributions include the theory of the Barkhausen noise in magnets, the statistical physics of plasticity and fracture, and recent work on the physics of cancer and protein aggregation. He published more than 200 scientific papers in the top scientific journals. In 2017, he co-authored with Caterina La Porta a book on the Physics of Cancer and in 2022 he published a book on Crackling Noise. Prof. Zapperi is the recipient of numerous awards including the Marie Curie Excellence Award, the Humboldt Research Award, an Advanced and Proof-of-Concept Grant from the European Research Council. He was elected fellow of the American Physical Society and named Finland Distinguished Professor by the Academy of Finland.