Abstract: In this talk, we first discuss a classical model of opinion dynamics in social networks and we establish new necessary and sufficient conditions for its stability and convergence. Subsequently, we propose a novel multidimensional model based on a correlation matrix, which takes into account (two or more) interdependent topics describing human attitudes and beliefs on multiple issues. We establish the system-theoretic properties of this multidimensional model and we show that the correlation matrix can be computed by means of a convex optimization program. Although the multidimensional model requires the agents to communicate synchronously, we demonstrate that the same final opinions can be obtained using a decentralized asynchronous gossip-based protocol.

CV: Roberto Tempo  is currently a Director of Research of Systems and Computer Engineering at CNR-IEIIT, Politecnico di Torino, Italy. He has held visiting positions at Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, Kyoto University, The University of Tokyo, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, German Aerospace Research Organization in Oberpfaffenhofen and Columbia University in New York. His research activities are focused on the analysis and design of complex systems with uncertainty, and various applications within information technology. On these topics, he has published more than 200 research papers in international journals, books and conferences. He is also a co-author of the book Randomized Algorithms for Analysis and Control of Uncertain Systems, with Applications, Springer-Verlag, London, published in two editions in 2005 and 2013. Dr. Tempo is a Fellow of the IEEE and a Fellow of the IFAC. He is a recipient of the IFAC Outstanding Paper Prize Award for a paper published in Automatica and of the Distinguished Member Award from the IEEE Control Systems Society. He is a Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences, Institute of Bologna, Italy, Class Engineering Sciences.
In 2010 Dr. Tempo was President of the IEEE Control Systems Society. He is currently serving as Editor-in-Chief of Automatica. He has been Editor for Technical Notes and Correspondence of the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control in 2005-2009 and a Senior Editor of the same journal in 2011-2014. He is a member of the Advisory Board of Systems & Control: Foundations & Applications, Birkhauser. He was General Co-Chair for the IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, Florence, Italy, 2013 and Program Chair of the first joint IEEE Conference on Decision and Control and  European Control Conference, Seville, Spain, 2005.