Researcher M. Ángeles Serrano, fellow of the American Physical Society 2024

Maria Ángeles Serrano, ICREA researcher at the Department of Condensed Matter Physics and the Institute of Complex Systems of the University of Barcelona (UBICS), has been elected fellow of the American Physical Society (APS), a prestigious international organisation created in 1899 to promote the advancement of knowledge in the world of physics. With Serrano’s distinction, this institution recognizes her “seminal contributions to the physics of complex networks, in particular the foundations of network geometry and advances in the analysis and modelling of heavy networks”.

Maria Ángeles Serrano, ICREA researcher at the Department of Condensed Matter Physics and the Institute of Complex Systems of the University of Barcelona (UBICS), has been elected fellow of the American Physical Society (APS), a prestigious international organisation created in 1899 to promote the advancement of knowledge in the world of physics. With Serrano’s distinction, this institution recognizes her “seminal contributions to the physics of complex networks, in particular the foundations of network geometry and advances in the analysis and modelling of heavy networks”.
The APS Fellowship programme aims to recognise APS members who have made outstanding contributions to the field of physics through research activity or innovative contributions to the application of physics in science and technology. Each year, the APS appoints a few experts — no more than 0.5 % of the membership — as distinguished members, following a highly demanding selection process within the institution.
Ángeles Serrano directs the Mapping Complexity Lab, at the Department of Condensed Matter Physics and the UBICS, and she currently coordinates the Complexity Lab Barcelona, at the Faculty of Physics. She has excelled in the field of the study of the function and evolution of complex systems and the surprising features that derive from their structure. This is a line of work with outstanding applications covering a wide range of real systems, from biological systems to economic and socio-technological networks.
An external lecturer at the Complexity Science Hub (CSH) in Vienna, Serrano holds a PhD in Theoretical Physics from the UB and a master’s degree in Financial Mathematics from the Centre for Research in Mathematics (CRM). She has completed postdoctoral stays at Indiana University (United States), the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (Switzerland) and the Institute for Cross-disciplinary Physics and Complex Systems (University of the Balearic Islands, CSIC).
She is a member of the Council of the Statistical and Nonlinear Physics Division (SNPD) of the European Physical Society (EPS) and of the Editorial Board of the journal APS Physical Review Research. She received the Outstanding Referee Award of the American Physical Society and the Network Science Society (NetSci) Award, which recognizes her contribution to fundamental advances in network theory.