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Program

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Sessions will be composed by theoretical presentations and demos of recently proposed methodologies and tools. There will be time for interaction with all participants.

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    Monday, 5th January 2009

17h30-17h45 : Jorge Louçã

Introduction to the winter school: organisation, program and scientific goals; the International Doctoral Program in Complexity Sciences.

17h45-19h : Tanya Araújo

Modelling and understanding all socio structures is a gigantic job and each time around one has to concentrate in a specific set of problems. Therefore, the specific questions we envision to address in this session of the winter school are the following:

1. Like other human phenomena, socioeconomic events are mediated by competition and cooperation. Network models have been extensively used in the representation of the interplay of competition and cooperation in socioeconomic environments. Can biological-inspired network models contribute to the understanding of macro (aggregate) economic behaviours?
2. In the context of the biological-inspired systems, the underlying network structures are redundant rather than optimally efficient, as already emphasized long ago by von Neumann. Can recent improvements in socio network analysis contribute to clarify the idea of efficiency versus reliability in socio economic environments? 

19h30-21h : Jorge Louçã and David Rodrigues

Social networks: examples, tools and research issues. Visualization tools: NWB, Pajek, Guess. Analysis tools: Ucinet. Issues: dynamic networks; real networks (ill-structured; noise and size issues; informal networks).

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    Tuesday, 6th January 2009

17h30-19h : John Symons

What are the social sciences about?  Economics and Sociology as 'Special Sciences'

19h30-21h : John Symons 

Computational Models: Prospects and Pitfalls    

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    Wednesday, 7th January 2009

17h30-19h : Jorge Louçã and David Rodrigues

Multi-agent based social simulation: basic notions, examples, tools and research issues. Tools: Repast; Mason; NetLogo; Breve. Examples: Game of Life; Schelling; Minority Games; Small World Network (6 steps Millgram).

19h30-21h : John Symons

Networks: Epistemic and Metaphysical Considerations. Example: Detecting Communities in Social Networks.

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    Thursday, 8th January 2009

17h30-19h : Jorge Louçã, David Rodrigues

State-of-the-art: Community detection in social networks. Algorithms: Girvan-Newman; Spectral Clustering; Clique Percolation; Fast Community (Newman & Clauset); Hierarchical Clustering.   

19h30-21h : Gergely Palla

Statistical properties of community evolution and tag distributions in complex networks.

The rich set of interactions between individuals in the society results in complex community structure, capturing highly connected circles of friends, families, or  professional cliques in a social network. Due to the frequent changes in  the activity  and communication patterns of individuals, the associated social and communication  network is subject to constant evolution. The cohesive groups of people in such networks  can grow by recruiting new members, or contract by loosing members, two (or more) groups  may merge into a single community, while a large enough social group can split into  several smaller ones, new communities are born and old ones may disappear. The first part of the talk will focus on the statistical properties of these processes studied in large social networks.

With the development of complex network theory, our picture of the structure and function of real network systems is getting refined rapidly. The inclusion of node tags (also  called as attributes, annotations, properties, categories, features) in the network  analysis leads to a richer structure, opening up the possibility for a more comprehensive analysis of the systems under investigation. The second part of the lecture will detail the fundamental  statistical features and self-similar properties of tagged networks.    

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    Friday, 9th January 2009

17h30-19h : Rui Marinheiro               

Computer network architectures and maps.

This talk will be about network architectures and organization. Network structure is inherent at several levels of communication, but some times difficult to understand.  Network maps have been used to mitigate this problem. We will then identify and explain  where on the communication networks those structures exists. We will then discuss about some tools that are used to construct network maps, and analyse some maps obtained using those tools.

19h30-21h : Rui Lopes               

Computer networks: how recent (and not so recent) technologies and applications in the Internet foster social networking and what chalenges and research efforts have they generated. 

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    Saturday, 10th January 2009

9h - 18h00                              

2nd ICC Workshop on Complexity in Social Systems

The workshop will include a keynote talk by James Sterbenz (University of Kansas), concerning adaptive computer network architectures. Please check the workshop web page for the detailed program. 

contact : idpcc dot dcti at iscte dot pt