computer science

Raissa D'Souza

Raissa D'Souza is a computer science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Raissa D'Souza rather than just read about it. In short: Raissa M. D'Souza is the Associate Dean of Research for the College of Engineering and a Professor of Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, Davis as well as an External Professor and member of the Science Board at the Santa Fe Institute.

Key takeaways

Raissa D'Souza belongs to computer science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Raissa D'Souza to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Raissa D'Souza from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Raissa M. D'Souza is the Associate Dean of Research for the College of Engineering and a Professor of Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, Davis as well as an External Professor and member of the Science Board at the Santa Fe Institute. She was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2016, Fellow of the Network Science Society in 2019, and Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2024. D'Souza works on theory and complex systems.

Early life and education When D'Souza was younger she faced the personal choice of going to college or moving to Paris to become a fashion designer. She eventually settled on university and studied physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. She earned her doctoral degree in theoretical physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1999, where she worked with Mehran Kardar and Norman Margolus. After graduation, she worked in both the fundamental mathematics group at Bell Labs and the Theory group at Microsoft Research. She held a visiting research position at the École Normale Supérior and the California Institute of Technology.

Research and career D'Souza was appointed as an Assistant Professor to the University of California, Davis in 2005, promoted to Associate Professor in 2008, and to Full Professor in 2013. She works on the mathematics of networks and the dynamics of how processes unfold on networks. These networks could be in technological, biological or social systems. She has studied the interaction between nodes, and how these can lead to self-organizing behaviour. She demonstrated that there exists a percolation threshold, where at a certain point a small number of additional connections can result in a considerable fraction of the network becoming connected. The percolation transition can be applied to a variety of real-world systems, from nanotubes to epileptic seizures or social networks. Large-scale connectivity and synchronisation can be crucial to the structure and function of complex networks. She demonstrated that sparse connections between separate networks helps to suppress cascading failures. She has also studied cascading behaviours in general, including power-grid failures, crashes in financial markets and spreads of political movements. In 2014 D'Souza was awarded a United States Department of Defense Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative Award to investigate the prediction and control of interdependent networks for the period 2014–2019.

Academic service

She is an External Professor at both the Santa Fe Institute and the Complexity Science Hub Vienna. She was a Kavli Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences several times and previously served on the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council of Complex Systems. She was made an inaugural member of the Global Young Academy in 2010. In 2015, D'Souza was appointed the 2nd President of the Network Science Society, and served in this role until 2018. In 2019, she was awarded the Network Science Society's inaugural Euler Award "for her influential contribution to the discovery and study of explosive percolation and the insights it provided to explosive synchronization and network optimization". D'Souza serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of Quanta Magazine. She was made lead editor of the American Physical Society journal Physical Review Research in 2019. Since Aug 2020, she is a member of the Board of Reviewing Editors at Science.

Awards and honours Her awards and honours include;

2015 Elected President of the Network Science Society 2016 Elected Fellow of the American Physical Society 2017 University of California, Davis Outstanding Mid-Career Faculty Research Award 2018 ACM Test-of-Time award (for lasting influence of paper from 2008) 2019 Network Science Society Euler Award 2019 Elected Fellow of the Network Science Society 2022 Outstanding Service Award of the Network Science Society 2024 Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

Publications Her publications include;

D'Souza, Raissa M.; Gómez-Gardeñes, Jesus; Nagler, Jan; Arenas, Alex (2019). "(2019) Explosive phenomena in complex networks". Advances in Physics. 68 (3): 123–223. arXiv:1907.09957. Bibcode:2019AdPhy..68..123D. doi:10.1080/00018732.2019.1650450. S2CID 198179863. Achlioptas, D.; d'Souza, R. M.; Spencer, J. (2009). "(2009) Explosive percolation in random networks". Science. 323 (5920): 1453–1455. Bibcode:2009Sci...323.1453A. doi:10.1126/science.1167782. PMID 19286548. S2CID 54565131. "(2012) Suppressing cascades of load in interdependent networks". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 109: E680–E689. 2012. Bird, Christian; Pattison, David; d'Souza, Raissa; Filkov, Vladimir; Devanbu, Premkumar (2008). "Latent social structure in open source projects". Proceedings of the 16th ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Foundations of software engineering. Sigsoft '08/Fse-16. pp. 24–35. doi:10.1145/1453101.1453107. ISBN 9781595939951. S2CID 5839120. Winner 2018 ACM Test-of-Time award.

References

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Raissa D'Souza

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Raissa D'Souza claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In computer science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Raissa D'Souza before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Raissa D'Souza ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Raissa D'Souza

In research: Raissa D'Souza appears in computer science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Raissa D'Souza in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Raissa D'Souza is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1969 births, 21st-century American scientists, 21st-century American women scientists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Raissa D'Souza outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Ask Teacher Smith questions about this articleOpens your AI tutor with a question about “Raissa D'Souza” →

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study Raissa D'Souza in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Raissa D'Souza means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Raissa D'Souza out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Raissa D'Souza in simple terms?

Why does Raissa D'Souza matter?

Because it connects several computer science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Raissa D'Souza?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Raissa D'Souza.