The award is given by the German Physical Society, the oldest physics society in the world, to recognize outstanding original contributions that use physical methods to develop a better understanding of socioeconomic issues

CSH scientist Fariba Karimi has won the prestigious socio- and econophysics prize for her research on inequality in complex networks.

Karimi leads the Hub’s computational social science group. Her current research focuses on computational and network approaches to address pressing societal issues, including gender disparities, visibility of minorities, and algorithmic biases. Last year, her study on gender disparities in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields, published in the journal Communications Physics, was featured both in Nature and Science magazines.

In addition, by using mathematical models, digital traces, and online experiments, Karimi studies the emergence of culture in Wikipedia, spreading of information and norms, and perception biases.

The award will be presented at the German Physical Society’s spring meeting in Dresden from March 26 to March 31. Karimi, who is also an assistant professor at TU Wien, will give a talk on marginalization in society and algorithms.