Janis Klaise
Update (April 2018): Please note that I have now finished my PhD and no longer maintain this website. Please see my personal website for up to date information.
I have now completed my PhD in Mathematics and Complexity Science, working with Dr. Samuel Johnson in the field of Complex Networks.
PhD Work
My PhD project is focused on investigating the emergence of topological properties of natural and artificial systems which can be described in the framework of complex network theory. Simply put, a complex network is an abstraction of a system with interactive agents, represented by a collection of nodes (agents) and links between them (interactions). Examples include friendship networks, neural networks (biological or artificial), food-webs, electrical grids and many more.
Research interests:
- Models of complex networks
- Statistical mechanics of complex networks
- Spreading processes on networks
Publications
-
J. Klaise and S. Johnson, Relaxation dynamics of maximally clustered networks, Physical Review E (in press) - J. Klaise and S. Johnson, The origin of motif families in food webs, Scientific Reports 7:16197 (2017)
- J. Klaise and S. Johnson, From neurons to epidemics: How trophic coherence affects spreading processes, Chaos 26:065310 (2016) [arXiv]
Events
- Data Study Group at the Alan Turing Institute, May 2017, London, Project: Thomson Reuters - Predictive graph analytics for investment portfolio management
- Conference on Complex Systems (CCS2016), September 2016, Amsterdam, Talk: The effect of hierarchical order in directed networks
- Workshop on Stochastic models of the spread of disease and information on networks, July 2016, ICMS, Edinburgh
- Manchester Stochastic Networks Day, June 2016, The University of Manchester
- Workshop on Fluctuation-driven phenomena in biological systems, April 2016, The University of Warwick
- 116th European Study Group with Industry, April 2016, Durham University, Project: Syngenta – Better ways to plan field trials
- PyCon UK, September 2015, Coventry University
- The Student Conference on Complexity Science (SCCS2015), September 2015, Granada, Talk: Global Order and Subgraphs in Food Webs
- 107th European Study Group with Industry, March 2015, The University of Manchester, Project: Winsland Consulting - Flight Efficiency in European Airspace
- The Student Conference on Complexity Science (SCCS2014), August 2014, Brighton
Teaching
- Lab tutor for 'Maths by Computer' (MATLAB) for 1st year students on the BSc/MMath in Mathematics, 2016
- Seminar tutor for 'Quantitative Analysis for Management 1' for 1st year students on the BSc in Management/International Management course, Warwick Business School, 2015
- Supervisor of mathematics for 1st year students on the BSc/MMath in Mathematics, 2011, 2012, 2014, 2015.
Background
My undergraduate degree was an MMath in Mathematics at the University of Warwick from 2008-2012. My final year project was in the area of algebraic number theory: Orders in quadratic imaginary fields of small class number, supervised by Prof. John Cremona.
In 2013-2014 I completed an MSc in Complexity Science which involved two 3-month long research projects:
- Mini-project 1: Modelling the transition to turbulence in pipe flow
Supervised by Prof. Dwight Barkley.
Liquid flow in a pipe exhibits a rich behaviour ranging from laminar, to intermittent to fully turbulent flow that depends on the Reynold's number. Here we model pipe flow with a simple discrete model that exhibits a phase transition into an absorbing state and attempt to characterize it by measuring a set of critical exponents.
Poster: 
- Mini-project 2: The effect of clustering in epidemic spreading on scale-free networks
Supervised by Dr. Thomas House and Dr. Charo I. Del Genio.
The spreading of infectious disease is often modelled a a stochastic process on a network. Human interaction networks are often highly complex, exhibiting a scale-free degree distribution and high clutering or transitivity. Here we study how an epidemic final size is influenced by the level of clustering in a network.
