Maurizio Porfiri

About

Maurizio Porfiri is an Institute Professor at New York University Tandon School of Engineering, holding tenured appointments in the Departments of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Biomedical Engineering. He serves as the Director of the Center for Urban Science + Progress and the inaugural Director of the Urban Institute. Additionally, he is the Interim Chair of the Civil, Urban, and Environmental Engineering Department. Dr. Porfiri received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Engineering Mechanics from Virginia Tech in 2000 and 2006, respectively, and holds a Laurea in Electrical Engineering with honors from Sapienza University of Rome, along with a dual Ph.D. in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics from Sapienza University of Rome and the University of Toulon. Since founding the Dynamical Systems Laboratory in 2006, he has been a faculty member at NYU Tandon, where he has contributed extensively to research on complex systems, with applications spanning mechanics, behavior, public health, and robotics. Recognized as a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the IEEE, Dr. Porfiri has authored approximately 400 journal publications, including articles in prominent journals such as Nature, Nature Human Behaviour, and Physical Review Letters. His research has been featured in major media outlets, and he has received numerous awards, including the NSF CAREER award, the ASME Gary Anderson Early Achievement Award, and the Research Excellence Award from NYU…

Research topics

• Artificial Intelligence
• Computer Science
• Economics
• Paleontology
• Cognitive science
• Natural resource economics
• Business
• Biology
• Environmental economics
• Management science

Selected publications

• Extreme flow simulations reveal skeletal adaptations of deep-sea sponges

  Nature · 2021 · 140 citations

  DOI

• Nudging and citizen science: The effectiveness of feedback in energy-demand management

  Journal of Environmental Management · 2020 · 81 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Nudging is a framework for directing individuals toward better behavior, both for personal and societal benefits, through heuristics that drive the decision-making process but without preventing any available choice. Considering the Grand Challenges that our society faces today, nudging represents an effective framework to tackle some of these pressing issues. In this work, we assessed the effectiveness of informational nudges in the form of detailed, customized feedback, within an energy-demand…

  DOI

• Decoding collective communications using information theory tools

  Journal of The Royal Society Interface · 2020 · 42 citations

  , which can help identify causal interactions in the type of complex, dynamical patterns often on display when organisms act collectively. Yet, there is a communications gap between studies focused on the ecological constraints and solutions of collective action with those demonstrating the promise of IT tools in this arena. We attempt to bridge this divide through a series of ecologically motivated examples designed to illustrate the benefits and challenges of using IT tools to extract deeper i…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Housing and husbandry factors affecting zebrafish novel tank test responses: a global multi-laboratory study

  Lab Animal · 2025-05-26 · 18 citations

  articleOpen access

  The reproducibility crisis in bioscience, characterized by inconsistent study results, impedes our understanding of biological processes. Global collaborative studies offer a unique solution to this problem. Here, we present a global collaboration using the zebrafish (Danio rerio) novel tank test, a popular behavioral assay for anxiety-like responses. We analyzed data from 20 laboratories worldwide, focusing on housing conditions and experimental setups. Our study included 488 adult zebrafish, t…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Leader–Follower Density Control of Spatial Dynamics in Large-Scale Multiagent Systems

  IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control · 2025-04-30 · 7 citations

  article

  We address the problem of controlling the density of a large ensemble of follower agents by acting on a group of leader agents that interact with them. Using coupled partial integro-differential equations to describe leader and follower density dynamics, we establish feasibility conditions and develop two control architectures ensuring global stability. The first employs feed-forward control on the followers' and a feedback on the leaders' density. The second implements a dual feedback loop thro…

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Robotics may help unravel the biological determinants of substance use disorders: studies in zebrafish

  NIH · $173k · 2017–2019

• NIH Grant R21AA021523

  NIH · $175k · 2016

• How and Why Fish School: An Information-theoretic Analysis of Coordinated Swimming

  NSF · $484k · 2019–2024

Frequent coauthors

• Salvatore Grimaldi

  Università degli Studi della Tuscia

  123 shared

• Flavia Tauro

  Università degli Studi della Tuscia

  106 shared

• Sean D. Peterson

  University of Waterloo

  87 shared

• Alessandro Rizzo

  Polytechnic University of Turin

  85 shared

• Nicole Abaid

  Virginia Tech

  79 shared

• Matteo Aureli

  University of Nevada, Reno

  78 shared

• Youngsu Cha

  Korea University

  75 shared

• Sachit Butail

  Northern Illinois University

  63 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Engineering Mechanics

  Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

  2006

• Ph.D.

  Sapienza University of Rome

  2005

Awards & honors

• Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME…
• Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Enginee…
• ASME C.D. Mote, Jr. Early Career Award (2015)
• Invitee of Japan-America Frontiers of Engineering Symposium,…
• Jacobs Excellence in Education Award (2014)

Similar researchers at New York University

• Cassandra Thielh-35
• Kaitlyn Hanleyh-28
• André J. Butlerh-24