Events
Past Event
WED@NICO SEMINAR: Adilson Motter, Northwestern University "Advantage of Diversity in Network Dynamics"
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
12:00 PM
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Lower Level Chambers Hall
Details
Title:
Advantage of Diversity in Network Dynamics: Convergence Because of (not Despite) Differences
Speaker:
Adilson Motter - Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Northwestern University
Talk Abstract:
Common wisdom assumes that individual entities are more likely to exhibit the same or similar behavior if they are equal to each other—imagine animals using the same gait, lasers pulsing together, birds singing the same notes, and agents reaching consensus. In this presentation, I will show that this assumption is in fact false in networks of interacting entities. This surprising observation is rooted in a new network phenomenon we term “asymmetry-induced symmetry– (AIS), in which the state of the system can be symmetric only when the system itself is not. Using spontaneous synchronization as a model process, I will discuss scenarios where the state in which all nodes exhibit identical dynamics (a state of maximum symmetry) can only be realized when the nodes themselves are not identical. AIS can be seen as the converse of the well-studied phenomenon of symmetry breaking, where the state has less symmetry than the system. AIS has far-reaching implications for processes that involve converging to uniform states; in particular, it offers a mechanism for yet-to-be-explained convergent forms of pattern formation, in which an asymmetric structure develops into a symmetric one. AIS also has implications for consensus dynamics, where it gives rise to scenarios in which interacting agents only reach consensus when they are sufficiently different from each other.
Live Stream:
To join the Meeting: bluejeans.com/8474912527
To join via Browser: bluejeans.com/8474912527/browser
Time
Wednesday, May 17, 2017 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Location
Lower Level Chambers Hall Map
Contact
Calendar
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
Data Science Nights - MAY 2026 - Speaker: Xudong Tang, Computer Science and NICO
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
5:30 PM
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M416, Technological Institute
Details
MAY MEETING: Thursday, May 28, 2026 at 5:30pm (US Central)
LOCATION:
ESAM Conference Room, Tech M416
2145 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208
AGENDA:
5:30pm - Meet and greet with refreshments
6:00pm - Talk with Xudong Tang, PhD Student, Computer Science, NICO, and the Human-AI Collaboration Lab, Northwestern University
TALK TITLE:
Human and Machine Perception of Voice Similarity
ABSTRACT:
Modern voice cloning systems generate synthetic speech that listeners frequently cannot identify as being synthetic. But a voice can sound natural without sounding like the intended person, and what determines whether a clone is heard as a particular person is an open question. Here we report a large-scale preregistered experiment in which we collected 92,239 responses from 175 participants on their perception of pairs of real recordings, voice clones, and continuously morphed voices drawn from 100 contemporary celebrities across 20 speaker groups. We find that voice clones do not reliably preserve perceived speaker identity, reducing same-speaker judgments by 12.7 percentage points even though the clones are produced by a state-of-the-art text-to-speech model, while leaving different-speaker judgments unchanged. Using continuously morphed stimuli, we find that speakers vary substantially in how much variation their perceived identity tolerates, and that this variation is not predicted by speaker demographics. Speaker embeddings account for 58.9\% (95\% CI = [55.7, 61.9]) of variance in identity judgments, which is more than acoustic features, social attributes, and clone status combined. Once all these observed features are accounted for, clone status adds no additional predictive power. These results shows that the perceptual impact of voice cloning is positional rather than categorical: we can model how listeners judge a voice by how close it falls to the perceptual boundary that defines each speaker's recognizable voice, applying the same criterion to real and synthetic speech alike.
DATA SCIENCE NIGHTS are monthly meetings featuring presentations and discussions about data-driven science and complex systems, organized by Northwestern University graduate students and scholars. Students and researchers of all levels are welcome! For more information: http://bit.ly/nico-dsn
FUTURE DATES:
Data Science Nights will return in September!
Time
Thursday, May 28, 2026 at 5:30 PM - 7:00 PM
Location
M416, Technological Institute Map
Contact
Calendar
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
Spring 2026 Commencement
University Academic Calendar
All Day
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Spring 2026 Commencement
Time
Sunday, June 14, 2026
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University Academic Calendar
Juneteenth - University Closed
University Academic Calendar
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Juneteenth - University Closed
Time
Friday, June 19, 2026
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University Academic Calendar
Independence Day (observed) - University Closed
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All Day
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Independence Day (observed) - University Closed
Time
Friday, July 3, 2026
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University Academic Calendar
Fall 2026 Classes Begin
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All Day
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Fall 2026 Classes Begin
Time
Wednesday, September 23, 2026
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University Academic Calendar