Network Science

With the growth of connected things, it is also essential to understand the network science. Thus, this course aims to provide a basic understanding of the network science to the seniors or master students. The subject is interdisciplinary and would help the students to apply the learned concepts to different research fields. Within this course, students will learn about the basics of networks, tools to perform analysis of networks, dynamics of and on the networks. As a case study, we will use the studied concepts and apply them to wireless networks and study the dissemination of information across the network that is created by connected devices.

The course will first introduce concepts of graph theory, where we will study the properties that help in describing a graph. Note that, we will use the terminology graph and networks interchangeably. It will form the basis for the following sections in the course. In the next section, we will study the Small World concept and Scale-Free Networks and their properties. These concepts are useful to understand as they are part of the study of Human mobility. Human mobility shows Scale-Free properties, and thus it is essential to understand the Scale-Free properties. Scale-Free networks show properties where some nodes have a high probability of occurrence in a path while others have a low probability of occurrence. To identify such nodes, we will first study network analysis and the dynamics of the network.

Once such concepts are introduced, we will study human mobility, its properties, patterns, and different models available that replicate human mobility. Human mobility is often linked to disease spreading. We will thus also study epidemic models available that replicate spreading of a disease. In the context of communication networks, as human carry devices, we will also see how information can be sent across the network using epidemic models. Termed as dynamics on the network we will study such process in one of the sessions.

To conclude, we will use the wireless mobile networks as a case study and build a dissemination model. The course will end by identifying future perspectives within the research domain.

Following are the recommended books:

• Network Science first edition, by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, Cambridge University Press, August 5, 2016. Resource available online at http://barabasi.com/networksciencebook/

• Networks: An Introduction first edition, by Mark Newman, Oxford University Press, (20 May 2010)

Other information

This course was entirely taught by me. The course was a semester long course with 45 hours of teaching that taught to 5 graduate students and 2 interested professors. This course was given at FGV, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil in 2017.