On March 9, at 5:00 PM, the 5th seminar of the CSIE Seminar Series took place, exploring the mathematical modeling of nomadic population dynamics through Mean Field Game theory.

The seminar was led by CSIE team member, researcher Ishkhanuhi Hakobian, under the scientific supervision of CSIE leading researcher Tigran Bakaryan. The talk explored memory-induced collective behavior in nomadic populations through the lens of Mean Field Game theory, combining analytical and numerical approaches. The presentation focused on how populations make collective movement decisions based not only on current conditions, but also on delayed environmental memory — modeling two contrasting behavioral strategies: cohesion toward previously visited areas and avoidance of over-exploited ones. Analytical results describing the evolution of population spread and trajectory were derived and validated through numerical simulations, confirming the theoretical predictions across both regimes.

The study was conducted in collaboration with Professor Diogo Gomes (KAUST, SA).

About the speaker:

Ishkhanuhi started her career as a Computer Vision engineer, working on machine learning and image processing problems. But alongside the technical work, a deeper pull toward mathematical theory kept growing — and at some point, she made a deliberate choice to follow it.

She holds a Bachelor's in Informatics and Applied Mathematics and a Master's in Applied Statistics and Data Science, both from Yerevan State University(YSU). Her Master's thesis, supervised by CSIE leading researcher Tigran Bakaryan, explored the mathematical modeling of multi-population opinion dynamics.

Today, Ishkhanuhi is a PhD student at the Institute of Mathematics of NAS RA and a researcher at CSIE, where she continues working under Tigran Bakaryan's supervision. Her research focuses on Mean Field Game theory and mathematical models of interacting dynamical systems.