In statistical physics and mathematics, percolation theory describes the behavior of a network when nodes or links are added. This is a geometric type of phase transition, since at a critical fraction of addition the network of small, disconnected clusters merge into significantly larger connected, so-called spanning clusters. The applications of percolation theory to materials science and in many other disciplines are discussed here and in the articles Network theory and Percolation.
A cascading failure is a failure in a system of interconnected parts in which the failure of one or few parts leads to the failure of other parts, growing progressively as a result of positive feedback. This can occur when a single part fails, increasing the probability that other portions of the system fail. Such a failure may happen in many types of systems, including power transmission, computer networking, finance, transportation systems, organisms, the human body, and ecosystems.
Barbara Liskov is an American computer scientist who has made pioneering contributions to programming languages and distributed computing. Her notable work includes the introduction of abstract data types and the accompanying principle of data abstraction, along with the Liskov substitution principle, which applies these ideas to object-oriented programming, subtyping, and inheritance. Her work was recognized with the 2008 Turing Award, the highest distinction in computer science.
José F.F. Mendes is a Portuguese physicist and professor of physics, best known for his work and contributions to the field of network theory.Graduated from University of Porto in 1987. He earned a PhD in March 1995 from the same University under the direction of Eduardo Lage, the title of the thesis was "Dynamics of spins systems".
Gerard J. Holzmann is a Dutch-American computer scientist and researcher at Bell Labs and NASA, best known as the developer of the SPIN model checker.
Elaine Jessica Weyuker is an ACM Fellow, an IEEE Fellow, and an AT&T Fellow at Bell Labs for research in software metrics and testing as well as elected to the National Academy of Engineering. She is the author of over 130 papers in journals and refereed conference proceedings.
Mark Newman is a British physicist and Anatol Rapoport Distinguished University Professor of Physics at the University of Michigan, as well as an external faculty member of the Santa Fe Institute. He is known for his fundamental contributions to the fields of complex systems and complex networks, for which he was awarded the Lagrange Prize in 2014 and the APS Kadanoff Prize in 2024.
Shlomo Havlin is a professor in the Department of Physics at Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel. He served as President of the Israel Physical Society (1996–1999), Dean of Faculty of Exact Sciences (1999–2001), chairman, Department of Physics (1984–1988).
Jennifer Tour Chayes is dean of the college of computing, data science, and society at the University of California, Berkeley. Before joining Berkeley, she was a technical fellow and managing director of Microsoft Research New England in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which she founded in 2008, and Microsoft Research New York City, which she founded in 2012.
The study of interdependent networks is a subfield of network science dealing with phenomena caused by the interactions between complex networks. Though there may be a wide variety of interactions between networks, dependency focuses on the scenario in which the nodes in one network require support from nodes in another network.
In applied physics, the concept of controlling self-organized criticality refers to the control of processes by which a self-organized system dissipates energy. The objective of the control is to reduce the probability of occurrence of and size of energy dissipation bursts, often called avalanches, of self-organized systems. Dissipation of energy in a self-organized critical system into a lower energy state can be costly for society, since it depends on avalanches of all sizes usually following a kind of power law distribution and large avalanches can be damaging and disruptive.
Mary Jean Harrold was an American computer scientist noted for her research on software engineering. She was also noted for her leadership in broadening participation in computing. She was on the boards of both CRA and CRA-W and was Co-Chair of CRA-W from 2003 to 2006.
Susan Beth Horwitz was an American computer scientist noted for her research on programming languages and software engineering, and in particular on program slicing and dataflow-analysis. She had several best paper and an impact paper award mentioned below under awards.
Alexander L. Wolf is an American computer scientist known for his research in software engineering, distributed systems, and computer networking. He is credited, along with his collaborators, with introducing the modern study of software architecture, content-based publish/subscribe messaging, content-based networking, automated process discovery, and the software deployment lifecycle. Wolf's 1985 Ph.D. dissertation developed language features for expressing a module's import/export specifications and the notion of multiple interfaces for a type, both of which are now common in modern computer programming languages.
Nenad Medvidović is a Professor of Computer Science and Informatics at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, CA. He is a fellow of the IEEE and an ACM Distinguished Member. He was chair of ACM SIGSOFT and co-author of Software Architecture: Foundations, Theory, and Practice (2009). In 2008, he received the Most Influential Paper Award for a paper titled "Architecture-Based Runtime Software Evolution" published in the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering 1998. In 2020, he received the Most Influential Paper Award for a paper titled "An architectural style for solving computationally intensive problems on large networks" published in the ACM/IEEE Software Engineering for Adaptive and Self-Managing Systems 2007. In 2017, he received an IEEE International Conference on Software Architecture Best Paper Award for his paper titled "Continuous Analysis of Collaborative Design".
Animashree (Anima) Anandkumar is the Bren Professor of Computing at California Institute of Technology. Previously, she was a senior director of Machine Learning research at NVIDIA and a principal scientist at Amazon Web Services. Her research considers tensor-algebraic methods, deep learning and non-convex problems.
Frederic (Fred) T. Chong is an American computer scientist known for research in computer architecture, quantum computing, and computer security.
Rediet Abebe is an Ethiopian computer scientist working in algorithms and artificial intelligence. She is an assistant professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley. Previously, she was a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows.
Katherine Whittaker Ferrara is an American engineer who is a professor of radiology at Stanford University. Ferrara has been elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering.
Each year since 2018, the Network Science Society selects up to 7 members of the network science community to be Fellows based on their enduring contributions to network science research and to the community of network scientists. Fellows are chosen from nominations received by the Network Science Society Fellowship Committee and are announced at the NetSci Conference hosted every year.
