University College London, UK
Elsa Arcaute is a Professor of Complexity Science at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, University College London, and an Honorary Professor at Hong Kong University. She holds a master’s degree and a PhD in theoretical physics from the University of Cambridge. Before joining UCL to study urban systems, she developed research within the Complexity and Networks group at Imperial College, on processes of self-organisation in ant-colonies and social systems in general.Her main area of research involves studying urban systems and city processes through the lens of complexity science. Specifically, she investigates the emergence of hierarchies and innovation, and the origin of patterns giving rise to the structure of cities, in order to develop a framework for the characterisation of resilience across multiple scales. She is also interested in data-driven projects involving mobility data, which explore connections within health, liveability, land use, city morphology, and accessibility across various transportation modes and scales. A key aspect of her research is the generation of scenarios to model interventions aimed at establishing sustainable cities and regions, particularly those related to active transport and the 15-minute city paradigm.