I always joke in the lab that anybody who wants to propose a new measure in ecology (or index, etc.) should pay $1,000, $2,000 if the new measure has an acronym. These funds could pay for graduate students to go to some conference. The only exception to the rule is for studies showing that two seemingly different measures are in fact the same t... Read more 22 Jan 2013 - 1 minute read
When I sit in a hiring committee, I ask myself: is it even possible to predict who’s going to be a good scientist by looking at a CV? It turns out that yes, it is possible. A piece in Nature on the delicate topic of measuring scientists productivity. Daniel Acuna, Konrad Kording and I tried to predict the future h-index of neuroscientists. You ... Read more 12 Sep 2012 - less than 1 minute read
Back in 2001, when I was studying for my PhD entrance exam, I read May’s 1972 paper for the first time, and fell in love with this problem. May’s result is very simple to explain: take S species and suppose that each species interacts with any other with probability C. Then, the expected number of connections for each species is SC. Now assume ... Read more 20 Feb 2012 - 2 minute read
Exactly 10 years ago, I was starting my PhD January 1st 2002 was my first day as an official PhD candidate, funded by the Italian Ministry of Education. I had been hanging around Antonio Bodini’s lab for a couple of months while preparing my entrance examination, but that was unofficial (and unpaid). These past 10 years have been very inte... Read more 02 Jan 2012 - 1 minute read
A new episode of WBEZ Clever Apes covers the work of the Allesina lab on rock-paper-scissor, featuring Jason and Anna playing rock-paper-scissor-bull! [caption id=”attachment_164” align=”alignnone” width=”300”] Anna and Jason play rock-paper-scissor-bull (c) Gabriel Spitzer, WBEZ[/caption] “Charles Darwin ushered in modern biology with his exp... Read more 23 Nov 2011 - less than 1 minute read