Sune Lehmann's personal blog. Networks, complexity, computational social science, and assorted asides.
Earlier this week, Buzzsprout sent me one of those cheerful automated emails that platforms send when they want you to feel good about yourself. This one worked: *Too Lazy to Read the Paper* has passed **10,000 downloads**. I never really made the podcast to have an impact. As a tenured professor, I have the luxury of being able to do fun experiments, such as podcasts that don't need to be…
I'm excited to be part of the *AI in Life Science* PhD summer school at the University of Copenhagen on 10 August 2026 with a keynote on life trajectories. The summer school, which is officially *AI and Data Science: Applications and Opportunities in Health Sciences*, runs 10–21 August and gathers early-career researchers from computer science, bioinformatics, biostatistics, epidemiology,…
I'm excited to be heading to Middelfart on August 17th to give the opening keynote at the [ITEASc Workshop 2026](https://event.au.dk/events/iteasc-workshop-2026/program), a two-day workshop run by Aarhus University that gathers BSc, MSc, PhD students, and postdocs from AU, Copenhagen, DTU, and SDU to practice interdisciplinary thinking, communication, and project development. The organizers asked…
We're lucky to have a genuine legend visiting DTU this summer. Bernardo Huberman is coming by on August 20th and will give a talk at 14:00 (full details below). I'm excited to announce - not only that Bernardo is visiting - but that he's giving a talk about quantum information *for non-physicists*. If you are a data scientist or a computer scientist who has always meant to figure out what all the…
New paper alert, just out in *Nature Communications*, and it's a genuinely fascinating one [1]. I want to stress that my contribution to this paper is tiny. This is the work of a wonderful group of colleagues – led by Mark Khurana and Samir Bhatt. In spite of my minuscule role, I want to highlight it here because the result is so cool. The question behind it: where do new SARS-CoV-2 variants…
The podcast is back! A couple of years ago, I got excited about podcasting. The concept for my podcast is amazing. It's called *Too Lazy to Read the Paper*. The pitch is that someone explains a paper that they love to me (so I don't have to read it). There's no paper this time. Instead I felt like talking on the air about agentic coding: Claude Code, Codex, and the rest – the whole business of…
I keep reading takes on the ever-increasing amounts of AI slop online. Below I want to approach that topic from a different angle: What's *worth* reading. We have a very limited amount of time on this planet, so what's worth spending our precious time on? My own personal philosophy can be roughly split up into two categories: *fiction* and *non-fiction*. ## Fiction This is the easy category (for…
Metaphors can be a support system for thinking. By finding the right analogies, we can map the complex unknown onto something familiar. And, in turn, that can help us better understand the complex unknown. So when my former student [Germans Savcisens](https://savcisens.com) visited the group to talk about his new work as a postdoc at Northeastern University, my spidey sense tingled when he showed…
I'm excited to be heading to *Eigtveds Pakhus* on May 28 to give a keynote at Rigsarkivet's release conference for the Multi-Generational Registry (MGR). From the event page: > På konferencen lancerer vi det danske Multigenerationsregister (MGR), der består af relationer mellem børn og forældre længere tilbage, end de er registreret i CPR-registret. MGR er en ny forskningsinfrastruktur, der kan…
On May 21st I'm joining a public panel debate at [TECHTONIC](https://algoritmer.org/aktiviteter/techtonic-kan-teknologien-forudsige-vores-doed/) — the event series run by Algoritmer (the ADD Project: Algorithms, Data, and Democracy) — under the somewhat ominous title **"Kan teknologien forudsige vores død?"** ("Can technology predict our death?"). The framing from the organizers: > Om AI…
I'm excited to be heading to Amsterdam on May 20th to give an invited lecture at the [Institute for Advanced Study](https://ias.uva.nl/content/events/2026/05/emergence-searching-for-laws-of-human-behavior.html) at the University of Amsterdam, organized by the Dutch Institute for Emergent Phenomena (DIEP) as part of the IAS Festival 2026. The talk is titled **"Emergence: searching for laws of human…
I'm excited to be heading to Amsterdam on May 19th to give a public lecture at [Science and Cocktails](https://www.scienceandcocktails.org/en/events/amsterdam/predicting-human-life), at Tolhuistuin. The talk is titled **"Predicting Human Life"**, and the S&C team framed it up like this: > If we had extremely detailed data about every person in an entire country… what could we really know? Could we…
I have to admit that I've had a ton of fun redesigning my site in collaboration with AI systems of various kinds. This blog is still written exclusively by me, but pretty much everything else has been generated by AI. Many of the details are stil my own silly ideas. A key design element are the portraits in the header. I'm not sure where it came from, but somehow I had the questionable idea to…
I hate to admit it, but I've been missing Twitter a little bit. I liked having a place to post little observations, thoughts, or dumb jokes. Somehow Bluesky isn't working for me. I like reading Bluesky - and I get useful info there, but I feel like I don't really know anyone there, so there's no one (or almost on one) to post to. And while LinkedIn now actually works for some things (announcing…
In the Social Complexity Lab at DTU/SODAS, we're lucky to have legendary network scientist Professor Martin Rosvall visiting soon. He will give a talk on March 10th at 14:00 at DTU (full talk details below). Martin is a brilliant network scientist and professor of physics with a focus on computational science at Umeå University, where he heads the Integrated Science Lab (IceLab) and its excellence…
As part of a project on something completely different, the always brilliant [Louis Boucherie](https://www.linkedin.com/in/louis-boucherie/) generated these maps of voting in Denmark during the 2022 general election [1]. Maybe it's me, but I can't remember seeing voting at this resolution (parishes [2]) and I found resulting images surprisingly neat & interesting, so thought it was worth a post.…
With the awesome [Anders Søgaard](https://anderssoegaard.github.io), I recently wrote an Op-ed in the Danish newspaper Politiken. The op-ed is paywalled, so I'm posting a little pre-print of it [here](https://sunelehmann.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/kronik_sl.pdf) for your reading pleasure.
[Jonas L Juul](https://jonassjuul.github.io) and I are organizing a series of talks this year on the topic of *The Predicted Human.* Our first speaker is the amazing Cesar Hidalgo. Did I mention that Cesar is amazing? Let me give you some reasons. He's the the Director of the *Center for Collective Learning* which spans the Universities of Toulouse, Manchester, and Harvard. He's a highly cited…
It's tough not to check Twitter, so I'm posting my random tweet ideas here: - So many clustering algorithms create division wherever they're applied. - Since stopping Twitter, I’m using RSS feeds instead. Kottke and Daring Fireball is all I’ve added so far and it works AMAZING. - Blown away by Messi yesterday, I was reminded of this glorious #fivethirtyeight data science piece from 2014 “Lionel…
**The setup**. In this post I want to discuss the topic of filter-bubbles / echo-chambers. I think it's dangerous to define too specifically what a filter bubble is (for reasons which will become apparent below), but the intuition is some kind of algorithmic sorting that exposes specific groups of people to content that resonates with them (so democrats see democrat-stuff, republicans see…
We are very excited to be joined by Christoph Stadtfeld on April 28th, where he'll discuss *The emergence of social networks and how they matter for individuals*. Christoph is an *Associate Professor of* *Social Networks* at ETH Zürich. His work investigates how social networks evolve over time and how individuals are affected by the emerging social structures that they are embedded in. The Swiss…
So, recently, I won a Danish research award. A side effect of winning the award is that a bunch of Sune-material was created around it. For example, an official portrait  There is also a video of me doing "research-y" stuff. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DN2kl0LiqGc And there's even a little [written "portrait" of me (in…
## Experiencing a Twitter take-down A few days ago, I was scrolling on Twitter when I came across a Twitter thread by Dr. Matthew Sweet (@drmatthewsweet) about Johann Hari's new book *[Stolen Focus](https://stolenfocusbook.com)*. I haven't read Stolen Focus, only the parts about our work. Those parts were completely fine, see full backstory below. I don't know if it counts as "viral", but the…
On May 20th, 2014, I gave a talk at [Christiania](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freetown_Christiania) in Copenhagen. The talk was at a cool talk-series called "Science and Cocktails", and my talk had the title "[Complex Networks: Connections, Measurements, and Social Systems](https://www.scienceandcocktails.org/en/events/copenhagen/complex-networks-connections-measurements-and-social-systems)". To…
Hey Copenhageners, I'm happy to announce the first talk in a long, long while. We're extremely lucky to have Dr. Leo Anthony Celi from MIT kick things off with a talk about his work with *Machine Learning for health care*. Talk details are below - and if you keep reading, there's also more info about Leo's incredibly impressive resume and ongoing work (read more **here**). - **Time**: Wednesday…
Our Episode 4 guest, Leidy Klotz, is a Professor at the University of Virginia. He studies the science of design: how we transform things from how they are - to how we want them to be. Leidy wants to apply his work outside of academia. He wants address climate change and systemic inequality, Leidy also works directly with organizations including the World Bank. Leidy has written more than 80…
This episode’s guest is Dirk Brockmann. Dirk is a physicist and complex systems researcher. He’s a professor at the Department of Biology, Humboldt University of Berlin and the Robert Koch Institute, Berlin. Berfore returning to his native Germany, he was a professor at Northwestern University. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xn8TWn5GTGg Watch it on YouTube, or - even better - subscribe where you…
Today is Roberta Sinatra day on [#TooLazyPod](https://twitter.com/hashtag/TooLazyPod?src=hashtag_click)!! Roberta is a physicist, an expert on science of succes, and all-round fantastic person. In the podcast, we talks about her recent paper ["Success and luck in creative careers"](https://epjdatascience.springeropen.com/articles/10.1140/epjds/s13688-020-00227-w).…
The first episode of my podcast *Too Lazy to Read the Paper* is out now! https://youtu.be/UmWCe74QfRQ It's finally out! This inaugural episode features physicist, urban planning, human mobility and transportation scientist Marta C. González from UC Berkeley explaining the long and winding road to her paper *The TimeGeo modeling framework for urban mobility without travel surveys* [1]. In the…
Along with a superb group of coauthors ([Andreas Bjerre-Nielsen](https://abjer.github.io/), [Valentin Kassarnig](https://www.linkedin.com/in/valentin-kassarnig-5330a3124/), and [David Dreyer Lassen](https://daviddlassen.github.io/)), I recently published *[Task-specific information outperforms surveillance-style big data in predictive analytics](https://www.pnas.org/content/118/14/e2020258118)* in…
I've made a silly teaser trailer for the first season of my science podcast project "Too Lazy to Read the Paper". The setup is a video call where the author explains a paper to me. We can use screen-sharing, for figures, etc. We'll record the call and post to YouTube. Possible participants are authors of a paper in network science or data science. The intended audience is PhD students, PostDocs…
A couple of days ago I gave a talk at University of Exeter. In the talk I talk about the take on higher-order structures in networks that I developed a couple of years ago - and which I'm still excited about. Check it out below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2LQRSJ1G7w
**Conference fatigue**. I'm realizing that conferences are not really working for me at the moment. In spite of heroic efforts from conference organizers, super-star speakers, etc. When experienced through the screen in my spare bedroom, it's all turning into a uniform, gray blur. And I generally don't enjoy giving talks into a matrix of empty, muted windows. **There is a deeper problem:** But who…
**Update May 23rd**. Final update for this post. I'm happy to report that the Danish government - in part based on input from our advisory board - has decided to base the Danish contact tracing app on the DP-3T (as implemented by Google and Apple) framework. Details here https://www.sum.dk/Aktuelt/Nyheder/Coronavirus/2020/Maj/Politisk-aftale-om-frivillig-smittesporingsapp-for-covid-19.aspx…
Starting march 1st this year, I was promoted to full professor at DTU! Pretty exciting. And if you want proof, take a look at my [updated profile page](https://www.dtu.dk/english/service/phonebook/person?id=25317&tab=1) (conveniently screen-shot and marked up below).  Hmm. And I should figure out how to get a new photo -…
We're lucky to have Lab Alum Arkadiusz 'Arek' Stopczynski visiting the lab on January 9th and 10th. On the 9th, he's busy being examiner at a PhD Defense, but on his second day in Denmark, he's going to give a talk to tell us about what he's been up to since starting at Google af couple of years ago. In addition to working with us at DTU, Arek has also been a postdoc in Sandy Pentland's lab at…
I had an absolutely wonderful time at the [Complex Networks 2018](https://www.complexnetworks.org) conference last week in Cambridge, UK. I learned a lot and got caught up a bit with all the amazing work that's going within complex network analysis and see some of the great new young researchers in the field. At the community detection sessions, I also saw several talks that drew on [our work on…
In the beginning of October, I headed to Aarhus to participate in TEDx Aarhus. It's was a great learning experience *and* excellent fun to participate in that event. The Aarhus TEDx crew were just super pro at everything. That includes excellent, pro-level photos - and they [posted all those great photos to…
On October 9th, we are lucky to have Pantelis Pipergias Analytis visiting the group. Pantelis recently moved as an assistant professor at the *Danish Institute of Advanced Studies* (D-IAS) at the University of Southern Denmark. Before moving to Denmark, he spent the past two years as a postdoctoral researcher at the Computer and Information Science department at Cornell University. Pantelis got…
Our old friend Piotr, current postdoc at Northeastern, and graduate from the group is visiting from his new home beyond the Atlantic. This coming Thursday, Piotr will give a short about his most recent work. Details below. - **Time:** Thursday, Sept 6th. 11AM - **Location:**Technical University of Denmark.B321, lab-space - ****Title**: Fairness in ranking** ****Abstract**:** Ranked lists of…
Later this month we will have legendary researcher Bernardo Huberman visiting. And we're lucky enough to have him giving a talk on one of the most exciting new developments in Network Science: Applying AI to networking problems. Bernardo has been a central player throughout the rise of network theory (and mentor for field notables, such as Lada Adamic and Jure Leskovec), but that’s just a fraction…
We're lucky to have Max Schich visiting DTU tomorrow. Max is an associate professor for arts and technology at The University of Texas at Dallas and a founding member of the Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History. His work converges hermeneutics, information visualization, computer science, and physics to understand art, history, and culture. Schich is the first author of "A Network Framework of…
Sometime last year I became an adjunct professor at University of Copenhagen's Department of Sociology. And just to be clear: I'm still primarily the Technical University of Denmark. The adjunct position is more of a way of signaling that I work closely with social science researchers (e.g. through my associate director position at [SODAS](http://sodas.ku.dk)). Anyway, the important thing here is…
The amazing Villum Foundation (who first funded the SensibleDTU project back in 2012) wanted to showcase some of the work coming out of their Young Investigator Program. As part of that, they have produced a beautiful video about my research (and also a bit about who I am). It's directed by Ole Stenum who shot something like 5 hours of conversation and elegantly captured the essence the whole…
This Wednesday we will have [Benjamin Maier](http://benmaier.org/about/), a PhD student (physics) from Dirk Brockmann's group speaking at DTU. Ben is based at the Robert Koch-Institut but also affiliated with Humboldt University Berlin's physics department and IRI Life Sciences. His interest lies in identifying the underlying processes of human contact facilitating the spread of diseases. In…
Next week, I'll be giving a talk about SensibleDTU at DTU. I hope the text below explains everything. - **Title**: *Sensible DTU. Is that project still going on? If yes, I wonder what the h&ck they're working on these days?* - **Date**: Tuesday Nov 7th, 2017. - **Time:** 13:00 - **Location**: DTU, Building 324, Room 030 **Abstract**: We've actually been doing a lot of interesting work on the…
For the concluding speaker in our September-talks series, I am happy to announce that [Hartmut Lentz](https://www.fli.de/de/institute/institut-fuer-epidemiologie-ife/wissenschaftler/dr-h-h-k-lentz/) will talk about his work on spread of infectious disease on temporal networks. Hartmut works at the "Institut für Epidemiologie" at the Friedrich Loeffler Institute. He is a fantastic speaker and an…
The September talk series continues full steam ahead. This week, you have a chance to see [Philipp Lorenz](http://www.itp.tu-berlin.de/nonlinear_dynamics_and_control_empirical_networks_and_neurodynamics/hoevel/mitglieder/doktorandinnen_und_doktoranden/lorenz) talk about dynamics of topics in online social media. Philipp is a PhD student at TU Berlin's *Institut für Theoretische Physik* in the…
We continue the streak of exciting September talks. This time it's DTU alum (now MIT) Bjarke Felbo who recently caused international press frenzy (see [MIT Technology Review](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608387/an-algorithm-trained-on-emoji-knows-when-youre-being-sarcastic-on-twitter/), [BBC](http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-40850171),…
Friend of the lab & postdoc at Northeastern University Piotr Sapieżyński is visiting Copenhagen and we're lucky to hear about his ongoing work on FAT (Fair, Accountable, and Transparent) Machine Learning. This talk which focuses on the *fair*part of FAT ML is not one to miss if you want to be on the cutting edge of ethically responsible Machine Learning. - **Date**: September 7th, 2017 - **Time**:…