Welcome to Network Science 2021/22!!
1 setembro 2021, 18:02 • Francisco Correia dos Santos
Dear students,
Welcome to Network Science 2021/22!! Many thanks for your choice.
Our theory and lab lectures will start on Monday, September 27. In our first theory class (15h), we will present an overview of all topics to be addressed in our course. General objectives, evaluation, and other issues related to the course will also be discussed. Our labs will start on the week of Oct. 4.
To give you an overview of our course, we aim to introduce the study of complex networks and systems where they naturally appear, involving the development of algorithms, models, and applications. The course focuses on social, biological and technological networks, all sharing common features and properties, thus justifying a shared approach. It addresses the development of scalable algorithms and data structures to efficiently engineer, study, characterize and handle large complex networks, together with the creation of theoretical models capable of describing empirically observed patterns in social and life sciences.
We also aim at offering a first contact with computational social, life and economic sciences, illustrating how network thinking and game-theoretical concepts can help us answer critical questions in these disciplines. We explore how to use large-scale simulations to understand and examine a diverse and disparate set of complex problems, also occurring at different time and length scales, and discuss to which extent simple models may provide powerful new ways to understand complex systems.
The number of application areas is vast, including web search engines, evolutionary biology, behavioural sciences, information diffusion, social networks, network resilience, epidemiology, and climate action, among others. Given the broad range of topics we address, the course is often of interest to students from different academic backgrounds and interests. Thus, the course is built such that it becomes as much self-contained as possible. We hope you like it!
The course grading includes one project to be developed by 2 or 3 students and a final exam. Ideally, each group will address a different topic in their project. We will assemble a comprehensive set of suggestions related to network science and complex systems (~80 topics), which will be soon available on our website. Still, please let us know if you have any particular topic you would like to explore.
Please note that we expect you to tackle your project in the classroom (labs) with our help. For this reason, it is preferable that all members of a given group share the same Lab.
During the semester, we will upload supporting material to the course's webpage, from scientific papers to useful links that you may use to develop your project. Each class will have a set of slides and additional readings which may be of your interest.
In the meantime, please let us know if we can be of further help.
On behalf of the entire team of network science, many thanks again for your preference!
Best regards and see you soon,
2021-22 NetSci team:
Francisco C. Santos, Alexandre P. Francisco, Francisco Sena, Henrique Fonseca & João Aparício