Ecologist Robert May last week described in compelling terms how thinking of banking as a man-made ecosystem reveals how correlation and hierarchy in networks can drive instability, as seen vividly in recent years.
Lord May spoke at the end of the first day of the two day workshop held on Tuesday 12 and Wednesday 13 June to launch the new Centre, which brought together a diverse international collection of speakers to discuss the quantitative analysis of network models of collective phenomena.
The conference attracted around 100 external and internal participants who heard from speakers addressing problems in protein dynamics, economics, social media, physics and mathematics.
Professor Alastair Spence, Director of the Centre for Networks and Collective Behaviour (CNCB), was delighted with the event and remarked that ”the success of the event indicates the bright future for interactions between mathematics and other fields that the Centre here in Bath is poised to develop.”
The workshop gave an excellent sense of the challenges and opportunities that quantitative analysis of network problems has on the horizon, diffusing theoretical insights from mathematics into a broad range of applied science and social science disciplines.
Further details of the event, supported by the London Mathematical Society, are available on the CNCB website via www.bath.ac.uk/research/cncb.
Watch presentations (Click on the links below to watch presentations from the event)
Complexity, Uncertainty, and Consequent Fragility in Financial Networks – Robert May
Statistical Mechanics of Multiplex networks – Ginestra Bianconi
Analytical approaches to network dynamics – Thilo Gross
Uncertainty in Social Networks: the structure and dynamics of collective mobilization – Yamir Moreno
Related links
The impact of networks and collective behaviour – June 2013