Biographical Information:
Albert-László Barabási is the Robert Gray Dodge Professor of Network Science and a Distinguished University Professor at Northeastern University, where he directs the Center for Complex Network Research. He holds appointments in the Departments of Physics and Computer Science at Northeastern University as well as in the Department of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women Hospital, and he is a visiting professor at the Department of Network and Data Science at Central European University in Budapest. A Hungarian born native of Transylvania, Romania, he received his Master’s in Theoretical Physics at the Eotvos University in Budapest, Hungary and was awarded a Ph.D. three years later at Boston University. Barabási is the author several general audience books, like “The Formula: The Science of Success (2018)” "Bursts: The Hidden Pattern Behind Everything We Do" (2010), "Linked: The New Science of Networks" (2002) and of the textbooks Network Science (2020) and the monograph Science of Science (coathored with Dashun Wang).
Barabasi's work lead to the discovery of scale-free networks in 1999 and proposed the Barabási-Albert model to explain their widespread emergence in natural, technological and social systems, from the cellular telephone to the WWW or online communities.
Barabási is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the recipient of the 2023 Julius Edgar Lilienfeld Prize of APS. He was awarded the FEBS Anniversary Prize for Systems Biology in 2005 and the John von Neumann Medal by the John von Neumann Computer Society from Hungary, for outstanding achievements in computer-related science and technology in 2006. He has been elected into the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (2004) and the Academia Europaea (2007). He received the C&C Prize from the NEC C&C Foundation in 2008. In 2009 the US National Academies of Sciences awarded him the 2009 Cozzarelli Prize. In 2011 Barabási was awarded the Lagrange Prize-CRT Foundation for his contributions to complex systems, awarded Doctor Honoris Causa from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, became an elected Fellow in AAAS (Physics), and is a 2013 Fellow of the Massachusetts Academy of Sciences.
Northeastern University *Robert Gray Dodge Professor of Network Science *Distinguished University Professor *Director, Center for Complex Network Research
Harvard University *Lecturer in Medicine, Department of Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital
Central European University *Visiting Professor, Center for Network Science
Abstract:
Network Science: From Abstract to Physical NetworksNetwork Science Institute and Department of Physics, Northeastern University
Division of Network Medicine, Harvard University
Department of Network and Data Science,Central European University. The architecture of a wide range of real systems, from the cell to the brain and communication systems, are best described as networks with complex topology. Network science has led to the realization that despite the diversity of these systems, the underlying networks emerge and evolve following simple but generic laws, that are best unveiled using the toolset of statistical physics. As a result, today network science is an indispensable tool from physics to medicine, and its applications, ranging from epidemic control during COVID to medical diagnostic tools affecting patients, directly impact our life. I will also explore the applications of the network science toolset to physical networks, like the brain or metamaterials, which are networks whose links are physical entities that cannot cross each other. Link physicality affects both the evolution and the structure of a network, in a way that is not captured by current graph-based approaches. Yet, the existence of an exact mapping between physical networks and independent sets allows us to derive the onset of physical effects and the emergence of a jamming