The Center for Network Science at Central European University provides an organizational platform for research in network science, with a special forcus on applications to practical social problems.

Network science, as a maturing field, offers a unique perspective to tackle complex problems, impenetrable to linear-proportional thinking.  The concept of networks has come to pervade modern society – in our everyday experience we routinely use online social network services, we hear reports on the operation of terrorist networks, and we speculate on the six degrees of separation to celebrities and presidents. The science of networks is emerging as a scientific discipline that examines exactly these kinds of interconnections.  It aims at explaining complex phenomena at larger scales emerging from simple principles of making network links.

Witnessing a decade of explosive growth, researchers in this field were engaged in basic research to unveil principles that govern network behavior in a wide range of empirical fields, from the evolution of the Internet, networks of friendship, disease transmission, ecological interactions and terrorism.  Sociological research on the emergence of social movements or new industries, ecological research on species extinction, or research in biology on protein interactions all demonstrated that a few critical links can lead to dramatic transformations. 

Moreover, these research fields started to inform each other over the last decade as ideas, methods, and researches began transgressing disciplinary boundaries: protein models were borrowed from sociological studies of central individuals, social movement studies learned from studies in physics into the nature of phase transitions.  With the computing power easily available, ideas about complex network dynamics are being tested with large datasets.  Although graph theory principles was already introduced in social and biological sciences many years ago, recent analytical advances, coupled with the enhanced potential of high-speed computation, have opened up new vistas to take on previously unimaginable challenges.