People
Alessandro Vespignani
President - SAB ChairNortheastern University
President - SAB ChairNortheastern University
Fields Of StudyDevelop analytical and computational models for the co-evolution and interdependence of large-scale social, technological and biological networks. Modeling contagion processes in structured populations. Developing predictive computational tools for the analysis of the spatial spread of emerging diseases. Analyze the dynamics and evolution of information and social networks. Model the adaptive behavior of social systems.
Website
Alessandro Vespignani research activity is focused on the study of “techno-social” systems, where infrastructures composed of different technological layers are interoperating within the social component that drives their use and development. In this context we aim at understanding how the very same elements assembled in large number can give rise – according to the various forces and elements at play – to different macroscopic and dynamical behaviors, opening the path to quantitative computational approaches and forecasting power.
Publications
Characterizing collective physical distancing in the U.S. during the first nine months of the COVID-19 pandemic
Brennan Klein, Timothy LaRock, Stefan McCabe, Leo Torres, Lisa Friedland, Maciej Kos, Filippo Privitera, Brennan Lake, Moritz U. G. Kraemer, John S. Brownstein, Richard Gonzalez, David Lazer, Tina Eliassi-Rad, Samuel V. Scarpino, Alessandro Vespignani, Matteo Chinazzi
PLoS Digital Health3(2), e0000430 (2025)
A multiscale modeling framework for Scenario Modeling: Characterizing the heterogeneity of the COVID-19 epidemic in the US
Matteo Chinazzi, Jessica T. Davis, Ana Pastore Y Piontti, Kunpeng Mu, Nicolò Gozzi, Marco Ajelli, Nicola Perra, Alessandro Vespignani
Epidemics47, 100757 (2024)
Estimating the impact of COVID-19 vaccine inequities: a modeling study
Nicolò Gozzi, Matteo Chinazzi, Natalie E. Dean, Ira M. Longini Jr, M. Elizabeth Halloran, Nicola Perra, Alessandro Vespignani
Nature Communications14, 3272 (2023)
Quantifying the importance and location of SARS-CoV-2 transmission events in large metropolitan areas
Alberto Aleta, David Martín-Corral, Michiel A. Bakker, Ana Pastore Y Piontti, Marco Ajelli, Maria Litvinova, Matteo Chinazzi, Natalie E. Dean, M. Elizabeth Halloran, Ira M. Longini Jr, Alex Pentland, Alessandro Vespignani, Yamir Moreno, Esteban Moro
PNAS119(26), e2112182119 (2022)
Evaluation of individual and ensemble probabilistic forecasts of COVID-19 mortality in the United States
Alessandro Vespignani,
PNAS119(15), e2113561119 (2022)
Comparing Sources of Mobility for Modelling the Epidemic Spread of Zika Virus in Colombia
Daniela Perrotta, Enrique Frias-Martinez, Ana Pastore Y Piontti, Qian Zhang, Miguel Luengo-Oroz, Daniela Paolotti, Michele Tizzoni, Alessandro Vespignani
PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases16(7), e0010565 (2022)
Transmission heterogeneities, kinetics, and controllability of SARS-CoV-2
Kaiyuan Sun, Wei Huang, Lidong Gao, Yan Wang, Kaiwei Luo, Lingshuang Ren, Zhifei Zhan, Xinghui Chen, Shanlu Zhao, Yiwei Huang, Qianlai Sun, Ziyan Liu, Maria Litvinova, Alessandro Vespignani, Marco Ajelli, Cécile Viboud, Hongjie Yu
Science371, 6526, (2021)
The impact of relaxing interventions on human contact patterns and SARS-CoV-2 transmission in China
Juanjuan Zhang, Maria Litvinova, Yuxia Liang, Wen Zheng, Huilin Shi, Alessandro Vespignani, Cécile Viboud, Marco Ajelli, Hongjie Yu
Science Advances7, 19, eabe2584 (2021)
Inferring high-resolution human mixing patterns for disease modeling
Dina Mistry, Maria Litvinova, Ana Pastore Y Piontti, Matteo Chinazzi, Laura Fumanelli, Marcelo F. C. Gomes, Syed A. Haque, Quan-Hui Liu, Kunpeng Mu, Xinyue Xiong, M. Elizabeth Halloran, Ira M. Longini Jr, Stefano Merler, Marco Ajelli, Alessandro Vespignani
Nature Communications12, 323 (2021)
Infectivity, susceptibility, and risk factors associated with SARS-CoV-2 transmission under intensive contact tracing in Hunan, China
Shixiong Hu, Yan Wang, Maria Litvinova, Kaiwei Luo, Lingshuang Ren, Qianlai Sun, Xinghui Chen, Ge Zeng, Jing Li, Lu Liang, Zhihong Deng, Wen Zheng, Mei Li, Hao Yang, Jinxin Guo, Kai Wang, Xinhua Chen, Ziyan Liu, Han Yan, Huilin Shi, Zhiyuan Chen, Yonghong Zhou, Kaiyuan Sun, Alessandro Vespignani, Cécile Viboud, Lidong Gao, Marco Ajelli, Hongjie Yu
Nature Communications12, 1533 (2021)
Give more data, awareness and control to individual citizens, and they will help COVID-19 containment
Mirco Nanni, Gennady Andrienko, Albert-László Barabási, Chiara Boldrini, Francesco Bonchi, Ciro Cattuto, Francesca Chiaromonte, Giovanni Comandé, Marco Conti, Mark Coté, Frank Dignum, Virginia Dignum, Josep Domingo-Ferrer, Paolo Ferragina, Fosca Giannotti, Riccardo Guidotti, Dirk Helbing, Kimmo Kaski, Janos Kertesz, Sune Lehmann, Bruno Lepri, Paul Lukowicz, Stan Matwin, David Megías Jiménez, Anna Monreale, Katharina Morik, Nuria Oliver, Andrea Passarella, Andrea Passerini, Dino Pedreschi, Alex Pentland, Fabio Pianesi, Francesca Pratesi, Salvatore Rinzivillo, Salvatore Ruggieri, Arno Siebes, Vicenc Torra, Roberto Trasarti, Jeroen van den Hoven, Alessandro Vespignani
Ethics and Information Technology23, 1-6 (2021)
Estimating the effect of social inequalities on the mitigation of COVID-19 across communities in Santiago de Chile
Nicolò Gozzi, Michele Tizzoni, Matteo Chinazzi, Leonardo Adrian Ferres, Alessandro Vespignani, Nicola Perra
Nature Communications12, 2429 (2021)
Data-driven estimate of SARS-CoV-2 herd immunity threshold in populations with individual contact pattern variations
Dan Lu, Alberto Aleta, Marco Ajelli, Romualdo Pastor-Satorras, Alessandro Vespignani, Yamir Moreno
Cryptic transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and the first COVID-19 wave
Jessica T. Davis, Matteo Chinazzi, Nicola Perra, Kunpeng Mu, Ana Pastore Y Piontti, Marco Ajelli, Natalie E. Dean, Corrado Gioannini, Maria Litvinova, Stefano Merler, Luca Rossi, Kaiyuan Sun, Xinyue Xiong, Ira M. Longini Jr, M. Elizabeth Halloran, Cécile Viboud, Alessandro Vespignani
Nature600, 127–132 (2021)
The effect of travel restrictions on the spread of the 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak
Matteo Chinazzi, Jessica T. Davis, Marco Ajelli, Corrado Gioannini, Maria Litvinova, Stefano Merler, Ana Pastore Y Piontti, Kunpeng Mu, Luca Rossi, Kaiyuan Sun, Cécile Viboud, Xinyue Xiong, Hongjie Yu, M. Elizabeth Halloran, Ira M. Longini Jr, Alessandro Vespignani
Science368(6489), 395-400 (2020)
The effect of human mobility and control measures on the COVID-19 epidemic in China
Moritz U. G. Kraemer, Chia-Hung Yang, Bernardo Gutierrez, Chieh-Hsi Wu, Brennan Klein, David M. Pigott, , Louis Du Plessis, Nuno R. Faria, Ruoran Li, William P. Hanage, John S. Brownstein, Maylis Layan, Alessandro Vespignani, Huaiyu Tian, Christopher Dye, Oliver G. Pybus, Samuel V. Scarpino
Science38, 6490, 493-497 (2020)
The COVID-19 outbreak in Sichuan, China: Epidemiology and impact of interventions
Quan-Hui Liu, Ana I. Bento, Kexin Yang, Hang Zhang, Xiaohan Yang, Stefano Merler, Alessandro Vespignani, Jiancheng Lv, Hongjie Yu, Wei Zhang, Tao Zhou, Marco Ajelli
PLoS Computational Biology16(12), e1008467 (2020)
Reshaping a nation: Mobility, commuting, and contact patterns during the COVID-19 outbreak
Brennan Klein, Timothy LaRock, Stefan McCabe, Leo Torres, Lisa Friedland, Filippo Privitera, Brennan Lake, Moritz U. G. Kraemer, John S. Brownstein, David Lazer, Tina Eliassi-Rad, Samuel V. Scarpino, Alessandro Vespignani, Matteo Chinazzi
Northeastern University (2020)
Real-Time Forecasting of the COVID-19 Outbreak in Chinese Provinces: Machine Learning Approach Using Novel Digital Data and Estimates From Mechanistic Models
Dianbo Liu, Leonardo Clemente, Canelle Poirier, Xiyu Ding, Matteo Chinazzi, Jessica T. Davis, Alessandro Vespignani, Mauricio Santillana
Journal of medical Internet research22(8), e20285 (2020)
Preliminary assessment of the International Spreading Risk Associated with the 2019 novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) outbreak in Wuhan City
Matteo Chinazzi, Jessica T. Davis, Corrado Gioannini, Maria Litvinova, Ana Pastore Y Piontti, Luca Rossi, Xinyue Xiong, M. Elizabeth Halloran, Ira M. Longini Jr, Alessandro Vespignani
Phase transitions in information spreading on structured populations
Jessica T. Davis, Nicola Perra, Qian Zhang, Yamir Moreno, Alessandro Vespignani
Nature Physics16, 590–596 (2020)
Modelling the impact of testing, contact tracing and household quarantine on second waves of COVID-19
Alberto Aleta, David Martín-Corral, Ana Pastore Y Piontti, Marco Ajelli, Maria Litvinova, Matteo Chinazzi, Natalie E. Dean, M. Elizabeth Halloran, Ira M. Longini Jr, Stefano Merler, Alex Pentland, Alessandro Vespignani, Esteban Moro, Yamir Moreno
Nature Human Behaviour4, 964–971 (2020)
Modelling COVID-19
Alessandro Vespignani, Huaiyu Tian, Christopher Dye, James O. Lloyd- Smith, Rosalind M. Eggo, Munik Shrestha, Samuel V. Scarpino, Bernardo Gutierrez, Moritz U. G. Kraemer, Joseph Wu, Kathy Leung, Gabriel M. Leung
Nature Review Physics2, 279-281 (2020)
Early Insights from Statistical and Mathematical Modeling of Key Epidemiologic Parameters of COVID-19
Matthew Biggerstaff, Benjamin J. Cowling, Zulma M. Cucunubá, Linh Dinh, Neil M. Ferguson, Huizhi Gao, Verity Hill, Natsuko Imai, Michael A. Johansson, Sarah Kada, Oliver Morgan, Ana Pastore Y Piontti, Jonathan A. Polonsky, Pragati Venkata Prasad, Talia M. Quandelacy, Andrew Rambaut, Jordan W. Tappero, Katelijn A. Vandemaele, Alessandro Vespignani, K. Lane Warmbrod, Jessica Y. Wong
Emerging Infectious Diseases26(11), e201074 (2020)
Detecting critical slowing down in high-dimensional epidemiological systems
Tobias Brett, Marco Ajelli, Quan-Hui Liu, Mary G. Krauland, John J. Grefenstette, Willem G. Van Panhuis, Alessandro Vespignani, John M. Drake, Pejman Rohani
Plos Computational Biology16(3), e1007679 (2020)
Changes in contact patterns shape the dynamics of the COVID-19 outbreak in China
Juanjuan Zhang, Maria Litvinova, Yuxia Liang, Yan Wang, Wei Wang, Shanlu Zhao, Qianhui Wu, Stefano Merler, Cécile Viboud, Alessandro Vespignani, Marco Ajelli, Hongjie Yu
Science368(6498), 1481-1486 (2020)
Assessing the spread of COVID-19 in Brazil: Mobility, morbidity and social vulnerability
Flávio C. Coelho, Raquel M. Lana, Oswaldo G. Cruz, Daniel A. M. Villela, Leonardo S. Bastos, Ana Pastore Y Piontti, Jessica T. Davis, Alessandro Vespignani, Cláudia T. Codeço, Marcelo F. C. Gomes
PLoS ONE15(9), e0238214 (2020)
Assessing changes in commuting and individual mobility in major metropolitan areas in the United States during the COVID-19 outbreak
Brennan Klein, Timothy LaRock, Stefan McCabe, Leo Torres, Filippo Privitera, Brennan Lake, Moritz U. G. Kraemer, John S. Brownstein, David Lazer, Tina Eliassi-Rad, Samuel V. Scarpino, Matteo Chinazzi, Alessandro Vespignani
Charting the Next Pandemic: Modeling Infectious Disease Spreading in the Data Science Age
Ana Pastore Y Piontti, Nicola Perra, Luca Rossi, Nicole Samay, Alessandro Vespignani, Corrado Gioannini, Marcelo F. C. Gomes, Bruno Gonçalves
Springer Cham XVI, 209 (2018)
The RAPIDD Ebola forecasting challenge: Model description and synthetic data generation
Marco Ajelli, Qian Zhang, Kaiyuan Sun, Stefano Merler, Laura Fumanelli, Gerardo Chowell, Lone Simonsen, Cécile Viboud, Alessandro Vespignani
Epidemics22(3-12), (2017)
Digital Epidemiology
Alessandro Vespignani, Ciro Cattuto, Marcel Salathé, Devon D. Brewer, John S. Brownstein, Ellsworth Campbell, Shashank Khandelwal, Patricia Mabry, Todd J. Bodnar, Caroline Buckee, Linus Bengtsson
PLoS Computational Biology8(7), e1002616 (2012)
Characterizing collective physical distancing in the U.S. during the first nine months of the COVID-19 pandemic
Brennan Klein, Timothy LaRock, Stefan McCabe, Leo Torres, Lisa Friedland, Maciej Kos, Filippo Privitera, Brennan Lake, Moritz U. G. Kraemer, John S. Brownstein, Richard Gonzalez, David Lazer, Tina Eliassi-Rad, Samuel V. Scarpino, Alessandro Vespignani, Matteo Chinazzi
PLoS Digital Health3(2), e0000430 (2025)
A multiscale modeling framework for Scenario Modeling: Characterizing the heterogeneity of the COVID-19 epidemic in the US
Matteo Chinazzi, Jessica T. Davis, Ana Pastore Y Piontti, Kunpeng Mu, Nicolò Gozzi, Marco Ajelli, Nicola Perra, Alessandro Vespignani
Epidemics47, 100757 (2024)
Estimating the impact of COVID-19 vaccine inequities: a modeling study
Nicolò Gozzi, Matteo Chinazzi, Natalie E. Dean, Ira M. Longini Jr, M. Elizabeth Halloran, Nicola Perra, Alessandro Vespignani
Nature Communications14, 3272 (2023)