Wednesday, July 26, 2017

Great Time Speaking on Investing in Infrastructure on the Dr. Matt Townsend Show

Last April, I published an article in The Conversation, "Calculating where America should invest in its transportation and communication networks." 

The article was republished in multiple publications and in May I received an email from a very friendly segment producer of the Matt Townsend Show. The message stated that Dr. Townsend had read my article, liked it a lot, and would like to have me as a guest on his radio show. Multiple dates as options were provided, but, given my very busy conference schedule this summer, plus the fact that I am a Summer Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study (RIAS) at Harvard, we settled on today as the date!

Trying to find a landline was not easy but, thanks to RIAS, a nice quiet and comfortable office was found and I also had a cell phone as a backup. I had listened to several segments of the show and very much enjoyed the facility with which Dr. Townsend asked questions and kept the conversation going on numerous timely topics being addressed by those that he was interviewing.

I came prepared with a bottle of water and my latte from Peet's to keep myself hydrated and pumped, which was easy.
 
Critical infrastructure networks is a topic I am extremely passionate about and have done research on with wonderful doctoral students from the Isenberg School as well as collaborators from Harvard to many other universities; some of these are Supernetwork Center Associates. Most notably, I mention Dr. Patrick Qiang, with whom I wrote the Fragile Networks book, and which was featured in the interview.



The interview can be accessed online.

Many thanks to Dr. Matt Townsend for the invitation to be on his show and for his terrific questions as an interviewer! I enjoyed the experience a lot.

And, coincidentally, afterwards, I had lunch with Professor David Parkes, a chaired professor of computer science at Harvard. When I was a Science Fellow at RIAS in 2005-2006, he, Professor Patrizia Daniele of the University of Catania, and I co-authored a paper on the Internet and the Braess paradox, which was published. 
Of course, in my interview with Dr. Matt Townsend I had to speak on the Braess paradox!