(Advanced) Topics in Network Science

Seminar

Networks have become a widely adopted paradigm to model a wide range of systems, cutting across science and engineering, ranging from biological systems to social networks and technical systems such as the Internet.

In this seminar you will be exposed to a broad range of topics related to network analysis and modeling, with a primary focus on two perspectives:

1. Networks as relational data. In this context we are given a network and would like to quantify and infer potential regularities, patterns, and various other network features, and assess whether these are consistent with statistical models we may have of our network data. This includes topics such as community detection, graph clustering or partitioning, as well as the study of random graph models etc.
2. Dynamical Systems on networks. In a range of applications we observe a dynamical process on a network and would like to understand if and how its behavior is influenced by the network structure. This includes topics such as the spread of information, opinion formation processes, or the spreading of viruses.

Requirements for Successful Participation

There are two main requirements for successful attendance of the seminar:

1. you present your topic concisely in a 12-minute talk to the other seminar students
2. you write a short paper on the topic, providing more detail than the talk

Furthermore, you are expected to engage in discussions about each talk and provide constructive feedback on earlier drafts of the reports by your fellow students.

Paper

The papers will be written in conference style, using a provided LaTeX template. This means, that after you have found your topic, you will write your paper and submit it for “peer review” by the other seminar members. You will receive constructive feedback on how to improve the paper and then be able to submit an updated, final version which is the one that will be graded. Note that this implies that you will have to write some short reviews on the reports submitted by other seminar attendees as well.

Presentation

In contrast to the paper, the talk is not supposed to describe everything in full detail, but you should provide an overview on your topic, highlighting the important concepts and ideas. Ideally your talk should give the audience a good grasp of the topic you have been focussing on.

The talk format will be 12 minutes + 3 minutes for questions, answers and discussions.

Organisation

Please account for the following points when planning your semester and/or holidays:

• In the mandatory introductory meeting, all organizational details will be discussed; exact details will be announced via Email to participants in advance.
• Topics will be selected/assigned after the introductory meeting. Final presentations will take place in a block seminar. The dates are not fixed yet, but will most likely be in the week after the final submissions.