Postdoctoral Fellow, Santa Fe Institute
About
I am a Schmidt Science Fellow at the Santa Fe Institute, working with Steven Strogatz. I got my Ph.D. in Physics from Northwestern, advised by Adilson Motter. I also have fond memories working at Cornell and IBM Research. You can reach me at yzhang@santafe.edu.
My interest lies at the interface of networks and nonlinear dynamics. When microscopic entities interact, they can often coordinate with each other and achieve a macroscopic impact. Think of electrons dancing together to create superconductivity, cardiac pacemakers beating synchronously to generate rhythmic impulses, and birds flocking together to confuse predators. What gives rise to the emergence of collective dynamics in these coupled many-body systems, especially when the interactions are non-local, irregular, and multifaceted? I draw techniques from dynamical systems, graph theory, and statistical mechanics to help answer this question.
Some topics I worked on recently include the effect of disorder on network dynamics, stability analysis and topological control of synchronization patterns, coexistence of coherence and incoherence in systems with symmetries, synchronization on higher-order networks, and basins of attraction in high-dimensional systems.
Research Projects

Chimera states
exploring dynamical patterns in which coherence and incoherence coexist
Order out of disorder
for interacting entities, sometimes to converge they must diverge

Topological control
manipulating synchronization patterns through minimal topological perturbations

Simultaneous block diagonalization
a unified framework to characterize the stability of synchronization patterns in both standard and generalized networks

Basins with tentacles
exploring basin structures in high-dimensional systems

Temporal sync
designing temporal networks that synchronize under resource constraints