Vittoria Colizza

Senior Researcher at INSERM (French National Institute of Health and Medical Research)

Vittoria Colizza is senior researcher at Inserm (French National Institute of Health and Medical Research) & Universite Pierre et Marie Curie, Faculte de Medecine, Paris, France. She is also Visiting Research Leader at ISI Foundation, Turin, Italy.

She received her PhD in Statistical and Biological Physics at the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste, Italy, in 2004. She then spent 3 years in the US at the Indiana University School of Informatics (Bloomington, IN), first as a post-doc and then as a Visiting Assistant Professor.

In 2007 she moved back to Europe and joined ISI Foundation after being awarded a Starting Independent Career Grant in Life Sciences by the European Research Council. In 2011 Vittoria moved to Inserm in Paris where she now leads the EPIcx lab (Epidemics in complex environments, www.epicx-lab.com) within the Pierre Louis Institute of Epidemiology and Public Health.

Through her work she has made important contributions to the development of the field of computational epidemiology (60+ publications in international peer-reviewed journals), based on sophisticated models and massive empirical datasets aimed at producing advances in the surveillance, modeling and prediction of epidemic spread.

These research activities are further supported by theoretical approaches integrating methods of complex systems, network science and statistical physics, and geographic information systems aimed at underpinning the mechanisms behind observed spreading phenomena.

In addition to the ERC Starting Grant in 2007, Colizza received the Young Talent Award by the Italian Ministry of Youth in 2010, the Prix Louis-Daniel Beauperthuy 2012 for Human biology and Medical sciences by the French Academy of Sciences, the Young Scientist Award for Socio-Econophysics in 2013, the Telethon Farmindustria Award in 2017, the Erdos–Rényi Prize by the Network Science Society in 2017.

She also served as Young Advisor to the Vice President of the European Commission Mrs. Neelie Kroes for the Digital Agenda for Europe.