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Dirk Helbing (born January 19, 1965) is Professor of
Computational Social Science Computational social science is the academic sub-discipline concerned with computational approaches to the social sciences. This means that computers are used to model, simulate, and analyze social phenomena. Fields include computational economics ...
at the Department of Humanities, Social and Political Sciences and affiliate of the Computer Science Department at ETH Zurich.


Biography

Dirk Helbing studied physics and mathematics at the
University of Göttingen The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen, (german: Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, known informally as Georgia Augusta) is a public research university in the city of Göttingen, Germany. Founded ...
. He completed his doctoral thesis at
Stuttgart University The University of Stuttgart (german: Universität Stuttgart) is a leading research university located in Stuttgart, Germany. It was founded in 1829 and is organized into 10 faculties. It is one of the oldest technical universities in Germany with ...
, on modeling social processes by means of game-theoretical approaches,
stochastic Stochastic (, ) refers to the property of being well described by a random probability distribution. Although stochasticity and randomness are distinct in that the former refers to a modeling approach and the latter refers to phenomena themselv ...
methods, and
complex systems theory A complex system is a system composed of many components which may interact with each other. Examples of complex systems are Earth's global climate, organisms, the human brain, infrastructure such as power grid, transportation or communication sy ...
. In 1996, he completed further studies on traffic dynamics and optimization. In 2000, he became a full professor and Managing Director of the Institute for Transport and Economics at
Dresden University of Technology TU Dresden (for german: Technische Universität Dresden, abbreviated as TUD and often wrongly translated as "Dresden University of Technology") is a public research university, the largest institute of higher education in the city of Dresden, th ...
. Helbing was elected as a member of the
German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina The German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina (german: Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina – Nationale Akademie der Wissenschaften), short Leopoldina, is the national academy of Germany, and is located in Halle (Saale). Founded ...
in 2008 and of the
World Academy of Art and Science The World Academy of Art and Science (WAAS), founded in 1960, is an international non-governmental scientific organization and global network of more than 800 scientists, artists, and scholars in more than 90 countries. It serves as a forum for s ...
in 2016. In January 2014 Prof. Helbing received an honorary PhD from
Delft University of Technology Delft University of Technology ( nl, Technische Universiteit Delft), also known as TU Delft, is the oldest and largest Dutch public technical university, located in Delft, Netherlands. As of 2022 it is ranked by QS World University Rankings among ...
(TU Delft). Since June 2015 he is affiliate professor at the faculty of Technology, Policy and Management at TU Delft, where he leads the PhD school in "Engineering Social Technologies for a Responsible Digital Future".


Research activities

Dirk Helbing started out as a physicist. His diploma thesis focussed on pedestrian, crowd, and evacuation modeling and simulation. During his PhD and habilitation in physics, he helped to establish the fields of socio-, econo- and traffic physics. He was also co-founder of the Physics of Socio-Economic Systems Division of the German Physical Society (DPG). As a visiting scientist at
Tel Aviv University Tel Aviv University (TAU) ( he, אוּנִיבֶרְסִיטַת תֵּל אָבִיב, ''Universitat Tel Aviv'') is a public research university in Tel Aviv, Israel. With over 30,000 students, it is the largest university in the country. Locate ...
and the
Weizmann Institute The Weizmann Institute of Science ( he, מכון ויצמן למדע ''Machon Vaitzman LeMada'') is a public research university in Rehovot, Israel, established in 1934, 14 years before the State of Israel. It differs from other Israeli univ ...
in Israel, the Eötvös University in Budapest, and
Xerox PARC PARC (Palo Alto Research Center; formerly Xerox PARC) is a research and development company in Palo Alto, California. Founded in 1969 by Jacob E. "Jack" Goldman, chief scientist of Xerox Corporation, the company was originally a division of Xero ...
in California, he focused on a broad variety of complex systems - including the self-organisation of pedestrians, traffic jams, bacterial patterns, and Mexican waves. At
Dresden University of Technology TU Dresden (for german: Technische Universität Dresden, abbreviated as TUD and often wrongly translated as "Dresden University of Technology") is a public research university, the largest institute of higher education in the city of Dresden, th ...
he became the Managing Director of the Institute of Transport & Economics, worked on traffic assistant systems (i.e. early self-driving cars) and a self-organized traffic light control system, which was patented. He found that crowd disasters are caused by a phenomenon called "crowd turbulence" and worked on ways to describe, reduce and respond to such disasters. As professor of Sociology at
ETH Zurich (colloquially) , former_name = eidgenössische polytechnische Schule , image = ETHZ.JPG , image_size = , established = , type = Public , budget = CHF 1.896 billion (2021) , rector = Günther Dissertori , president = Joël Mesot , ac ...
, he worked on evolutionary game theory and agent-based computer simulations of social processes and phenomena. The work of Prof. Helbing has been widely cited in the media and academia and he has written more than 10 papers in
Nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physics, physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomenon, phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. ...
,
Science Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...
and
PNAS ''Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America'' (often abbreviated ''PNAS'' or ''PNAS USA'') is a peer-reviewed multidisciplinary scientific journal. It is the official journal of the National Academy of Scien ...
. In 2012, he won the Idee Suisse Award. He co-founded the Competence Center for Coping with Crises in Complex Socio-Economic Systems, the Risk Center, the Institute for Science, Technology and Policy (ISTP) and the Decision Science Laboratory (DeSciL). While coordinating the FuturICT initiative, he helped to further develop disciplines such as data science, computational social science, and global systems science in Europe. This work resulted in the establishment of the Nervousnet Platform, a smartphone app enabling users to share data to be used to achieve scientific and social goals and lay the groundwork for digital democracy. Helbing worked for the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Complex Systems. He was elected member of the External Faculty of the Santa Fe Institute and now belongs to the External Faculty of the Complexity Science Hub Vienna. He sits in the Boards of the Global Brain Institute in Brussels and the International Centre for Earth Simulation in Geneva. He is also involved in the activities of "Staatslabor" (a Swiss government science initiative) as well as the establishment of the Blockchain initiative and the Blockchain Lab in Delft. He is a member of a Swiss governmental advisory group on the societal impact of digitization and was lead author of a "Digital Manifesto" on how to safeguard democratic values in the digital age. Prof. Helbing is an adviser to the Citizen Science Center Zurich and is an advocate of a European Charter of Digital Human Rights. Dirk Helbing is known for the
social force model Crowd simulation is the process of simulating the movement (or ) of a large number of entities or characters. It is commonly used to create virtual scenes for visual media like films and video games, and is also used in crisis training, architec ...
, in particular its application to self-organising phenomena in pedestrian crowds. Besides the slower-is-faster effect, he introduced the freezing-by-heating effect and the phase diagram of congested
traffic Traffic comprises pedestrians, vehicles, ridden or herded animals, trains, and other conveyances that use public ways (roads) for travel and transportation. Traffic laws govern and regulate traffic, while rules of the road include traffic ...
states. Helbing also proposed a microscopic foundation of evolutionary
game theory Game theory is the study of mathematical models of strategic interactions among rational agents. Myerson, Roger B. (1991). ''Game Theory: Analysis of Conflict,'' Harvard University Press, p.&nbs1 Chapter-preview links, ppvii–xi It has appli ...
A mathematical model for behavioral changes by pair interactions
D. Helbing (1992) Pages 330–348 in: G. Haag, U. Mueller, and K. G. Troitzsch (eds.) Economic Evolution and Demographic Change. Formal Models in Social Sciences (Springer, Berlin).
and has studied self-organized behavioral conventions. His work has applied the principles of
collective intelligence Collective intelligence (CI) is shared or group intelligence (GI) that emerges from the collaboration, collective efforts, and competition of many individuals and appears in consensus decision making. The term appears in sociobiology, politic ...
and self-organized control to the optimization of urban and freeway traffic. He has conducted research into norms and conflict, and the role of success-driven motion for the establishment of cooperation among selfish individuals, socio-inspired technology and techno-social systems, the spread of disaster and crisis management.


Living Earth Simulator

Helbing was the Principal Investigator on a project named ''FuturICT Knowledge Accelerator and Crisis Relief System'', a computing system working on
big data Though used sometimes loosely partly because of a lack of formal definition, the interpretation that seems to best describe Big data is the one associated with large body of information that we could not comprehend when used only in smaller am ...
sets, conceived as sort of a ''
crystal ball A crystal ball, also known as an orbuculum or crystal sphere, is a crystal or glass ball and common fortune-telling object. It is generally associated with the performance of clairvoyance and scrying in particular. In more recent times, the cry ...
'' of the world. The core of the system is the ''Living Earth Simulator'', a computing machine attempting "to model global-scale systems — economies, governments, cultural trends, epidemics, agriculture, technological developments, and more — using torrential data streams, sophisticated algorithms, and as much hardware as it takes". However, the project lost in the final round of the application for funding from the
European Commission The European Commission (EC) is the executive of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with 27 members of the Commission (informally known as "Commissioners") headed by a President. It includes an administrative body o ...
of €1 billion.
David Weinberger David Weinberger (born 1950) is an American author, technologist, and speaker. Trained as a philosopher, Weinberger's work focuses on how technology — particularly the internet and machine learning — is changing our ideas, with books about the ...
, ''The Machine That Would Predict the Future'',''
Scientific American ''Scientific American'', informally abbreviated ''SciAm'' or sometimes ''SA'', is an American popular science magazine. Many famous scientists, including Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla, have contributed articles to it. In print since 1845, it i ...
'', Dec 2011, Vol. 305, Issue no. 6
Despite this, the ideas developed by the group have influenced international research programs. Since 2017, the FuturICT 2.0 project is being funded by the European Commission's FLAG-ERA program.


Noteworthy projects and presentations by Dirk Helbing's research teams in Dresden, Zurich and Delft

* Derivation of the replicator equation in evolutionary game theory and of the self-organization of behavioral conventions from behavioral imitation. * Creation of an electronic traffic assistance system to reduce traffic jams on freeways (an early algorithm for self-driving cars). * Invention of a patented self-organized traffic light control system for cities. * Semiconductor logistic project with
Infineon Technologies Infineon Technologies AG is a German semiconductor manufacturer founded in 1999, when the semiconductor operations of the former parent company Siemens AG were spun off. Infineon has about 50,280 employees and is one of the ten largest semicond ...
increasing throughput by 30%. * Development of the "social force model", frequently used for pedestrian and crowd simulation. * Establishment of an expert team to improve the safety of pilgrimages. * Data-based agent-based simulation study on the Middle Eastern conflict in Jerusalem. * Publication "How to save human lives: What complexity science and information systems can contribute". * Patent: "Interaction Support Processor" - Ethically aligned design for information systems. * Nervousnet App - the Internet of Things as a Citizen Web (in development). * Grippenet App for anonymous cooperative health monitoring (in development). * Speech at the Out of the Box Conference with World Thinkers and the Dalai Lama on May 16, 2012. * Declaration of "Digital Democracy" at the Falling Walls Conference in Berlin on November 9, 2015. * Talk at the "Build Peace" Conference in Zurich on September 11, 2016: "A New Paradigm for World Peace Is Possible". * BIOTS - Blockchain and Internet of Things School at ETH Zurich, founded in 2016. * Co-founded Zurich Hub for Ethics and Technology in (2016). * Article in Nature, "Sustainable development: Turn war rooms into peace rooms", Dirk Helbing and Peter Seele, September 28, 2017. * Interview at "Petersberger Gespräche" 2017 (Bonn, German) on September 16, 2017: "Artificial Intelligence - from feasibility and superintelligence to planning and envisioning the future".Peterberger Gespräche (2017-09-16)
''Interview with Professor Dirk Helbing''
retrieved 2018-03-02


Footnotes


External links


Homepage of ETH Zurich's Chair of Sociology, in particular of Modeling and Simulation (SOMS)

Publication list of Dirk Helbing

Selected papers in Game Theory
an
Traffic Theory

Scientific videos and animations

Living Science project
{{DEFAULTSORT:Helbing, Dirk Academic staff of ETH Zurich Computational social scientists Complex systems scientists University of Göttingen alumni 1965 births Living people People from Aalen Network scientists