ProfessorMikhail Prokopenko

In October 2014, Prof Mikhail Prokopenko joined the University of Sydney, after 20 years with CSIRO, Australia. Currently, he is the Director of the Centre for Complex Systems and member of the leadership team (Pathogen Emergence and Spread Theme) at the University of Sydney Infectious Diseases Institute (Sydney ID). He holds a PhD in Computer Science (Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia, 2002), MA in Economics (Missouri University, Columbia, USA, 1994), and MSc in Applied Mathematics (Azerbaijan State Oil and Industry University, Baku, USSR, 1988).

Mikhail has a strong international reputation in modelling and simulation of complex self-organising systems, with over 200 publications and patents, including articles in Nature Medicine, Nature Communications, Physics of Life Reviews, Science Advances, etc. His cross-disciplinary research in information theory, computational epidemiology and artificial intelligence has been applied to pandemic and crisis modelling, systems biology, anomaly detection, network optimisation, and other diverse areas.

Prof Prokopenko was an invited speaker at The National Science Weeks and Sydney Science Festivals, several symposia at The Defence Science and Technology (Australia), The Santa Fe Institute (USA), the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science at Arizona State University (USA), and numerous other events. Prof Prokopenko is a Fellow of The Royal Society of New South Wales, and a founding member of The International Association for Guided Self-Organisation. Mikhail was the team leader of Gliders2016 and Fractals2019, the world champion teams in RoboCup-2016 and 2019 respectively (Simulation League 2D), having led a joint research effort with CSIRO.

In April 2020, Prof Prokopenko contributed to the “Roadmap to Recovery” report to the Australian Federal Government, prepared by the Group of 8 Australian universities. His research on modelling COVID-19 in Australia is listed in Nature’s Top 50 SARS-CoV-2 articles from 2020, with several findings quantifying the effects of non-pharmaceutical interventions on controlling the COVID-19 pandemic having been adopted by the World Health Organization. His work has received a broad national and international media coverage, having been reported during 2020/2021 by major Australian commercial free-to-air television and radio networks and national newspapers, reaching an audience of over 50 million people internationally and domestically.