Can we understand another species?
With Shoma Chaudhury, on sperm whale communication, AI, and the ethics of listening in on other lives.
Network science · Cognition · Collectives
Giovanni Petri
What does structure make possible?
I study the limits of information processing in brains, machines and collectives: what shared structure lets them do, and what it costs.
Professor at the Network Science Institute, Northeastern University London.
Head of NPLab.
Network Science Lead at Project CETI.
01 Structure
When does the whole
change the rules?
Some interactions only make sense in groups. I use topology and statistical physics to understand what becomes possible when we look beyond pairs.
Simplicial models of social contagion Nature Communications · 201902 Cognition
What is the cost
of sharing?
Shared representations let us generalise. They can also make tasks interfere. I study the limits this tension places on brains and artificial learning systems.
Bound by semanticity ICLR · 202603 Collectives
How do many minds
act together?
Collective behaviour depends on what individuals can sense, share and coordinate. The same question runs from neurons to societies.
Cooperation during a sperm whale birth Science · 2026- Neurons
- Firing together. Sharing the load.
- People
- Ideas taking hold in groups.
- Language models
- Talking to one another, and to us.
- Sperm whales
- Shared calls, dives and births.
Selected work
Across the questions
Papers and conversations across structure, cognition and collective behaviour.
Paper · ICLR · 2026
Bound by semanticity: universal laws governing the generalization-identification tradeoff
M. Nurisso et al.
Finite semantic resolution forces a trade-off between generalising and telling things apart.
Read the paper ↗Out loud
Talks & conversations
- Listening to sperm whales Radio Popolare · 2026 · Italian
- Cose dell’altro mondo Il Post, Sonar · 2024 · Italian
- Informational and topological signatures of individuality IPAM, UCLA · 2024
- Bridging cognitive control and network theory CC&B, University of Milan · 2021
About
Physics, minds,
and other lives.
I trained in Pisa, did a PhD at Imperial College London, and spent years in Turin at the ISI Foundation and CENTAI. I now lead NPLab at Northeastern University London.
I’m also a member of Project CETI, where I lead the network science. My work moves between brain activity, artificial learning systems and the social lives of sperm whales, following questions that rarely stay within one discipline.