CSH Talk by Fanqi Zeng: “Waves of Cooperation in public goods games on Networks”

Fanqi Zeng from Oxford University will present a talk on Friday, May 26, 2023 at 3 PM at the Salon.

Title: Waves of Cooperation in public goods games on Networks

Abstract:

Cooperation is a reciprocal behavior that benefits others while costing oneself. In this work, we propose a general mathematical framework to investigate the dynamics of a typical public good game that involves cooperators and defectors in a patch-based ecological system. We first use the generalized modeling method to engineer a public goods game. Then by introducing the diffusion among spatial patches, we examine that the coupling factors that evolve in the networks of patches can trigger various instabilities such as shortwave instability and finite wave number instability in three different scenarios, representing other cooperative behaviors among players. Collectively, the perspectives in this work shed new light on the intricate relationship between cooperators and defectors in public goods game, and highlight opportunities for analyzing nonlinear dynamics of public goods models in ecological systems and beyond efficiently.

Bio: 

Fanqi Zeng is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Sociology at the University of Oxford. He earned his PhD from the Department of Engineering Mathematics at the University of Bristol, during which he focused on investigating complex social and natural systems using top-down (model-driven) and bottom-up (data-driven) methodologies, such as agent-based modelling, network science, nonlinear dynamics and data science. He is particularly interested in applying interdisciplinary approaches to understand different complex systems.