Alessandro Vespignani is the Sternberg Distinguished Professor at Northeastern University in Boston, where he leads the Laboratory for the Modeling of Biological and Socio-technical Systems. He is fellow of the American Physical Society, member of the Academy of Europe, and fellow of the Institute for Quantitative Social Sciences at Harvard University. He is also serving in the board/leadership of a variety of journals and the Institute for Scientific Interchange Foundation. He is now focusing his research activity in modeling diffusion phenomena in complex systems, including the realistic and data-driven computational modeling of infectious diseases spread.