Luis A. Nunes Amaral, PhD
McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, Northwestern University
Evanston, Illinois

Speaker Topic
Building a Cartography of Cellular Networks - How Developing the "Big Picture" Will Help Identify New Research Directions

Dr. Amaral received his BS (1990) and MS (1992) in Physics from the University of Lisbon. He went on to obtain a PhD from the Department of Physics at Boston University under the guidance of Gene Stanley. From 1995-1996 Dr. Amaral was a postdoctoral fellow at Forschungszentrum Jlich in Germany, where he worked with Joachim Krug. He successively spent two years as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with Mehran Kardar. In 1999, Dr. Amaral was a Visiting Scholar at both the Center for Polymer Studies and at the Margret and H.A. Rey Laboratory for Nonlinear Dynamics in Medicine, and in 2000 he held joint Research Associate appointments at these institutions. Since August of 2002 Dr. Amaral has served as an Associate Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Northwestern University. Teaching is clearly a significant part of Dr. Amaral’s calling; since 2002 he has mentored 13 different students, ranging from high school to Postdoctoral Fellows.

Dr. Amaral’s research centers on the field of complex systems. He has focused on complex networks in nature, the extraction of medical information from physiologic signals, the growth of economic and social organizations, and return fluctuations in asset markets. Dr. Amaral’s research has resulted in invitations to speak on more than 47 different occasions at meetings here in the United States and abroad.