The apparently new science of complex networks

by Hugues Bersini (IRIDIA, Brussels)

Friday 17 Apr 2009, 16:00 → 17:00 Europe/Stockholm

122:026 (Roslagstullsbacken 17)

In this talk, I will summarize 20 years of research done in my lab on biochemical networks, their dynamic and structural properties and the functional role they play in biological systems.

I will explain some realistic mechanisms of structural growing (beyond the recently popularized preferential attachment or gene duplication) of the networks and the intricate dependency between the resulting topology and the dynamics of the nodes constituting the networks.

A couple of specific examples studied in my lab will be described in more details:

• immune idiotypic networks and how they raise deep questions about the fundamental immune self/non-self distinction
• neural networks and how the exploitation of complex dynamics can boost the information storing capacity, social networks and how cooperation prevails on defection when their topology favors the presence of hubs or the clustering of nodes.

Streaming video