Oxford Internet Institute

Dr Chico Camargo is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Data Science. He uses tools from mathematical modelling, complex systems and data science to develop new approaches to questions in the social sciences, focusing on public opinion dynamics, information dynamics, human mobility and infrastructure. He is also a member of the #SocialHumanities network and of the PastNet network, at The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH).

Chico graduated with a BSc from the University of São Paulo, as part of the Molecular Sciences Programme, and later worked in mathematical modelling in biology at the Wolfson Centre for Mathematical Biology, and at the Department of Zoology, University of Oxford. He then moved to a PhD (DPhil) in systems biology, also at Oxford, as a Clarendon Scholar in Brasenose College. In his PhD research, he used tools from complex systems and machine learning to investigate the physical principles that rule biological evolution.

Apart from doing science himself, Chico is also passionate about communicating it to wider audiences. He has spoken at science communication events such as FameLab, as well as Oxford’s Science Cabaret, and is also part of the award-winning YouTube educational channel BláBláLogia, which hosts videos in Portuguese on topics ranging from space travel to ecology to film making. In his show, Top Models, Chico speaks about his favourite scientific tool: mathematical models.

Position held at OII:

• Research Assistant, May 2017 – 2018
• Postdoctoral Researcher in Data Science, January 2018 –

Research Interests:

computational social science, opinion dynamics, cultural evolution, complex systems, evolutionary biology, systems biology, algorithmic complexity, data visualisation