Social Forces: How Networks Affect Our Lives [Dance Your PhD 2024]

This video is a presentation of the Ph.D. research by Lasse Mohr and is an application to the competition “Dance your PhD” organized by Science Magazine. Lasse is a third-year Ph.D. student at the Technical University of Denmark studying social networks under the supervision of Prof. Sune Lehmann and Prof. Morten Mørup. An engineer by training, Lasse’s research is centered on applying methods from deep learning, statistical physics, and dynamical systems theory to answer human-centered questions using massive network datasets. Research: In Harvard’s 80 year study on human happiness, the ‘Harvard Study on Human Development’, a key finding is that social relationships are more important than genetics in determining health, happiness, and financial outcomes. More generally, there is a wealth of evidence for the importance of our social networks across a wide range of areas. However, systematic large-scale studies of the role of social networks have proven challenging due to the diffic