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Babak Heydari

Professor of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering & Network Science, Northeastern University

Director, MAGICS Lab

My research integrates systems engineering, network science, artificial intelligence, and management to study the modeling, design, and governance of complex sociotechnical systems. A central theme running through it is how to align centralized design and governance interventions with decentralized adaptation, strategic behavior, and emergent collective dynamics — how top-down structure and bottom-up behavior actually meet in real systems, and how to design at that seam.

I trained as an electrical engineer at UC Berkeley, where my doctoral work was on millimeter-wave integrated circuits, and spent several years in Silicon Valley building RF and wireless startups before turning to sociotechnical systems. That earlier background still shapes how I approach the current work: I look for the underlying structural mechanisms behind complex behavior, and I care that models remain both formally rigorous and empirically grounded.

Google Scholar · Email · CV · Northeastern · Network Science Institute

Portrait of Babak Heydari.

01 — Research

Research

My current research spans four connected threads. The common thread is that in each, formal modeling and computational methods are put in service of design and governance questions that don't reduce to any one discipline.

01

Human-AI and Multi-Agent Systems

Strategic behavior of AI agents; information and network design for hybrid human-AI systems.

02

Adaptive Information and Network Architecture

How network structure and information flow shape collective behavior, and how a manager with limited authority can steer these systems.

03

Platform Economics and Generative AI Sustainability

Dynamics of digital platforms in the era of AI substitution; conditions for platform fragility and directional value flow.

04

Resilience and Decentralized Recovery

Bottom-up recovery in sociotechnical systems; the interplay of top-down policy with emergent adaptation, including epidemic modeling.

02 — Lab

MAGICS Lab

I direct the MAGICS Lab (Multi-Agent Intelligent Complex Systems) at Northeastern, where a team of PhD students works across these threads on theoretical modeling, computational experiments, and empirical studies of sociotechnical systems.

Diagram of the MAGICS Lab research areas and their connections.
Visit MAGICS Lab

03 — Academic Leadership

Academic Leadership

Alongside research and teaching, I hold several editorial and academic leadership roles.

  • Associate Chair of Graduate Studies, Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Northeastern University

    2025 — present

  • Program Co-Director, MS in Engineering Management, Northeastern University

    2021 — present

  • Chair, Scientific Advisory Committee, Singapore-ETH Future Resilient Systems

    2020 — 2025

  • President and Chair of the Executive Committee, Council of Engineering Systems Universities (CESUN)

    2021 — 2023

  • Associate Editor, ASME Journal of Mechanical Design

    2019 — present

  • Associate Editor, Wiley Systems Engineering Journal

    2015 — present

  • Guest Associate Editor (Lead), Special Issue on Design of Sociotechnical Systems, ASME Journal of Mechanical Design

    2020 — 2021

  • Guest Associate Editor, Special Issue on Networks and Graphs for Engineering Systems and Design, ASME JCISE

    2024 — 2025

04 — Teaching

Teaching

I teach at the intersection of engineering systems, computational methods, and design of sociotechnical systems, primarily to graduate students in engineering, network science, and public policy.

Courses Developed

  • IE 7350: Sociotechnical Systems — Computational Models for Design and Policy

    Graduate

  • IE 3734: Platforms and Sharing Economy Systems

    Graduate

Recent Teaching (Northeastern)

  • IE 7350: Sociotechnical Systems — Computational Models for Design and Policy

    Fall 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2021

  • EMGT 6225: Economic Decision Making

    Regularly, 2018 — 2024

05 — Selected Publications

Selected Publications

A selection of recent work; see Google Scholar for the full list.

  1. 01

    Heydari, B. ( Under review ). The Direction of Value Flow: A Theory of Platform Fragility under AI Substitution . Management Science .

  2. 02

    Heydari, B., Chattopadhyay, S., Padhee, S., Karim, S. ( 2025 ). Core or Periphery: Examining Where to Allocate Heterogeneous Inventors and the Impact on Firms' Innovation . Strategic Management Journal .

  3. 03

    Chen, Q., Ilami, S., Lore, N., Heydari, B. ( 2026 ). Adaptive Information Modulation: Designing Governance Mechanisms for Multi-Agent AI Systems . ASME Journal of Mechanical Design .

  4. 04
  5. 05
  6. 06

    Cao, Q., Heydari, B. ( 2022 ). Micro-level Social Contact Patterns and the Success of COVID-19 Policies . Nature Computational Science, 2(9), 595–604 .

  7. 07

    Maddah, N., Heydari, B. ( 2024 ). Decentralized Recovery of Resilient Network Systems . Reliability Engineering and System Safety .

Book

Heydari, B., Ergun, O., Dyal-Chand, R., & Bart, Y. (Eds.). (2023). Re-Engineering the Sharing Economy: Design, Policy, and Regulation. Cambridge University Press.

See all publications on Google Scholar

06 — Talks & Media

Talks & Media

Recent Talks

Selected Honors and Speaking

  • Invited Plenary Speaker, International Conference on System Dynamics, Boston (2025)
  • Best Conference Presentation Award, CESUN (2025)
  • Keynote Speaker, International Conference on Resilient Systems, Mexico City (2023)
  • NSF CAREER Award (2016)
  • College of Engineering Faculty Fellow, Northeastern University (2022–2025)

Media Coverage

  • Scientific American — coverage of research on strategic behavior of large language models
  • NPR, WIRED, Boston Globe, EuroNews — coverage of research on Airbnb and neighborhood crime
  • The New York Times, Stat News, National Review, Boston.com — coverage of research on early COVID-19 policy effects (featured by the U.S. Surgeon General)