|Talks|

Unifying puzzles in social, technical, and biological systems using networks

Dissertation proposal
Hybrid
Past Talk
Kishore Vasan
Network Science PhD Student
Fri, Apr 26, 2024
6:30 PM UTC
Fri, Apr 26, 2024
6:30 PM UTC
In-person
4 Thomas More St
London E1W 1YW, UK
The Roux Institute
Room
100 Fore Street
Portland, ME 04101
Network Science Institute
2nd floor
Network Science Institute
11th floor
177 Huntington Ave
Boston, MA 02115
Room
58 St Katharine's Way
London E1W 1LP, UK

Talk recording

The foundation of scientific progress lies in unraveling the phenomena, or puzzles, that characterize every scientific discipline. Despite the apparent differences between these puzzles across fields, they share a common thread: the potential for resolution through networks as a shared toolset and methodological approach. Using data from social, technical, and biological systems, the proposed dissertation showcases the value of network-based thinking under different constraints. In the first proposed project, I use the protein-protein interaction (PPI) network, a sub-cellular web that is used by pharmaceutical scientists to develop drugs, and study the emergence of a drug discovery winter in clinical trials, and formulate mechanisms to optimize drug exploration. In the second proposed project, I study mobility in the metaverse, and show that in the absence of physical distances and commuting costs, mobility networks, where nodes are locations and an edge defines movement between two locations, can explain individual and macroscopic mobility patterns. Finally, in the third proposed project, I investigate gender-based segregation in chess, a gender-invariant sport, and its impact on career longevity and fame of female athletes using player networks, where a node is a player and an edge defines matches between two players. This dissertation ultimately exemplifies the universal capabilities of networks to offer explanations to puzzles across multiple scientific domains.

About the speaker
Kishore is a PhD student at the Network Science Institute at Northeastern University. He utilizes computational techniques and big data to study network processes at different scales, and across multiple domains.
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Apr 26, 2024