Announcing a new Special Interest Group (SIG): Network Science

We announce the formation of a new special interest group (SIG) on Network Science within the focus area Applied Data Science. Its inaugural meeting will be held on November 21, 2022, 15:30-17:00 at RUPPERT – 011, Utrecht University.

Why network science is important

Network Science focuses on studying patterns of connection in a wide range of phenomena in the form of networks. Recently, Network Science has received considerable attention due to the widespread availability of (enormous) network data resources pertaining to various disciplines such as (system) biology, physics, economics, social and behavioural sciences, etc. 

Using methods and tools in Physics, Statistics, Probability theory, Machine Learning, Graph theory, Algorithms, etc. Network science can help us address critical questions, such as how can networks help us understand and predict social systems? How to find essential individuals and communities? How to predict unobserved connections between genes? How to learn the dependencies between interrelated entities? How can we stop the disease from spreading in networks?

Aim of the first meeting of SIG: Network Science

  • In this meeting, first, we briefly introduce this special group, its aim, and its organisers at Utrecht university. 
  • We will discuss how such a special group can help researchers of various disciplines at Utrecht University address their research questions. 
  • Then we will have a nice talk: "Coding structure and the evolution of regulatory networks" given by Paulien Hogeweg, a full professor of Theoretical Biology at Utrecht University. 
  • Finally, we will have drinks together and an open discussion.

Organisers

  • Mahdi Shafiee Kamalabad is an assistant professor of Applied Data Science at the Department of Methodology and Statistics. His main research interests are Network Modeling (and Inference), Social Network Analysis,Complex data analysis and Bayesian Statistics.
  • Javier Garcia Bernardo is an assistant professor at the Department of Methodology and Statistics in the Social Data Science (SoDa) team. In his research, he applies computational and Network models to understand social and economical systems. 
  • Hans Bodlaender is a full professor in the Department of Information and Computing Sciences and head of the research group Algorithms and Complexity. His research focuses on algorithms, particularly for graphs and networks, often concerning computational complexity. 
  • Erik Jan van Leeuwen is an assistant professor in the Department of Information and Computing Sciences. His main research interest is to design efficient algorithms that make computational analysis of networks possible. He teaches a Master course on Network Science.

Please note that “here” you can request to be part of our Teams group: Network Science, where we regularly discuss interesting topics and inform the team members about the SIG: Network Science activities.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact organisers.