Tuesday, 22 September 2009, 4:00 p.m., McMurtry Auditorium, Duncan Hall - Afternoon Lecture

D. Michael Lindsay, Rice University

"Networks as Channels of Power"

How do social and professional networks shape the flow of influence and power in American society? Drawing on recent research completed for the White House Fellows Project, Professor Lindsay will explore the ways that networks benefit and attract elite leaders, create hubs of activity, and constitute important elements in the "circuit" of elite power in American society today. He will discuss his interviews with national leaders and reveal some of the most important findings from the unprecedented survey he conducted with Fellows two weeks before it is released to the American public. Come and learn more about Professor Lindsay's innovative research on networks and power.

Video available here.

Tuesday, 27 October 2009, 4:00 p.m., McMurtry Auditorium, Duncan Hall - Afternoon Lecture

Lauren Ancel Meyers, Section of Integrative Biology, University of Texas

"Using Network Models to Predict and Control 2009 (H1N1) Pandemic Influenza"

Public health agencies across the globe are working to mitigate the impact of the 2009 pandemic caused by swine-origin influenza A (H1N1) virus. Prior to the development of an effective vaccine, the primary modes of control include careful surveillance, social distancing and hygiene measures, strategic school closures, other community measures, and the prudent use of antiviral medications to prevent infection (prophylaxis) or reduce the severity and duration of symptoms (treatment). When medical resources are limited or measures are costly, successful disease control hinges on rapid and reliable determination of when, where and how to implement such measures to most effectively reduce the burden of disease. In this talk, I will describe how network models of influenza transmission are being used to improve our understanding of this new virus and support public health decision-making. 

Video available here.

THE BOCHNER LECTURE

Tuesday, 18 November 2009, 7:00 p.m., McMurtry Auditorium, Duncan Hall - Evening Lecture

Albert-Lászió Barabási, Center for Complex Network Research, Northeastern University
Department of Medicine, Harvard Medical School

"Networks and the Architecture of Complexity: From the WWW to the Cell"

Highly interconnected networks with amazingly complex structure describe systems as diverse as the World Wide Web, our cells, social systems or the economy. Recent studies indicate that these networks are the result of self-organizing processes governed by simple but generic laws, resulting in architectural features that makes them much more similar to each other than one would have expected by chance. I will discuss the amazing order characterizing our interconnected world and its implications to network robustness and spreading processes, with applications to marketing, social organizations, trade patterns or the spreading of rumors and ideas in the society.  

Video available here.

Tuesday, 2 December 2009, 4:00 p.m., McMurtry Auditorium, Duncan Hall - Afternoon Lecture

Rich Baraniuk, Rice University/Connexions

"Networks of Knowledge"

The last 15 years have seen major shifts in the nature of knowledge production and circulation. The Internet has enabled new modes of authorship, new forms of open licensing and distribution, and new forms of collaboration and peer production to flourish. New online education projects, scientific journals, and reference works have rapidly gained critical mass. But in turn, new anxieties have arisen concerning the long-term sustainability and quality assurance of these enterprises. In this talk, we will review the past, present, and several potential futures of Internet-enabled scholarly publication with a particular emphasis on the global open-access movement.  

Video available here.

Tuesday, 26 January 2010, 4:00 p.m., McMurtry Auditorium, Duncan Hall - Afternoon Lecture

Leonardo Dueñas-Osorio, Rice University

"Complex Networks: The Key to Resilient Infrastructure Systems"

Critical infrastructure systems are increasingly interconnected and intricate, making it ever more challenging to ensure their smooth operation and to prioritize growth, maintenance and repair operations. Utility systems such as power, water and gas delivery networks, for example, face a constant and diverse stream of threats that overwhelm traditional approaches to estimating system reliability. Fortunately, a new approach that combines network theory with engineering system reliability provides promising avenues for tackling the functional and topological complexity of modern urban infrastructure systems. This talk outlines how this approach can enhance the resilience of utility systems in the face of natural hazards, random failures, and targeted attacks, while improving their general performance.

Video available here.

Tuesday, 16 February, 2010, 7:00 p.m., McMurtry Auditorium, Duncan Hall - Evening Lecture

John H. Byrne, The University of Texas Medical School at Houston

"Neural Networks: Brain Circuitry for Processing Information, Generating Rhythms, and Learning and Remembering"

While networks of social behavior (culture and society) and learning networks (knowledge) are an integral part of our everyday world, these networks operate from networks of hundreds of billions of interconnected nerve cells composing the three pounds of jelly-like material found within our skull. Although the operation of many neuronal networks are still mysterious, neuroscientists are beginning to understand the basic principles of the individual nodes (nerve cells) and the network architecture enabling information processing and the generation of behavior. This lecture will review the basic electrical properties of nerve cells and the ways in which they communicate with each other through chemical transmitters. Despite the vast complexity of brain networks, reflex behaviors, locomotion, and elementary visual information processing can be understood in terms of several elementary micro network motifs consisting of just a few neurons. Nano networks of biochemical and genetic cascades within nerve cells support the operation of the micro networks. The micro networks form macro networks for higher brain functions such as perception.

Video available here.

Tuesday, 16 March, 2010, 4:00 p.m., McMurtry Auditorium, Duncan Hall - Afternoon Lecture

Kerry Ward, Rice University

"Networks of Empire: Forced Migration in the Dutch East India Company"

The Dutch East India Company manifested itself through multiple networks that amalgamated spatially and over time into an imperial web whose sovereignty, granted in 1602 by charter from the States General of the United Provinces of the Netherlands, was effectively created and maintained but always partial and contingent. The Company's empire consisted of durable networks of trade, administration, settlement, legality, and migration whose regional circuits and territorially and institutionally based nodes of regulatory power operated not only on land and sea but also discursively. The empire developed in dynamic response to challenges waged by individuals and other sovereign entities operating within the Indian Ocean. This lecture will examine the Dutch East India Company's network of forced migration to explain how empires are constituted through multiple and intersecting fields of partial sovereignty.

Video available here.

Tuesday, 20 April, 2010, 4:00 p.m., McMurtry Auditorium, Duncan Hall - Afternoon Lecture

Craig Watkins, University of Texas at Austin

"Got Facebook? Rethinking Social Capital and Social Networks in the Digital Age"

Today about 93% of teens and young adults are online and many of them actively use social network sites like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter.  Among young adults in college the use of social network sites is nearly universal, even obligatory.  In this talk, Dr. Watkins considers a basic but increasingly perplexing question: what's social about social media?  Throughout it's history the internet has been viewed by some critics as a technology that makes humans less social, less communal, and as a result, less interested in the world and the people around them.  But as we learn more about young people's engagement with social media we are also gaining a greater understanding of the complex social ties and networks--social/professional, local/global, strong/weak--they build and maintain through new communication technologies.  Moreover, the talk considers how "digital gating," that is, the formation of online social networks that are shaped by race and class distinctions, are shaping online behavior and sociability.

Video not available.