CNetS faculty manage informal research groups and labs of various size and scope, including faculty, graduate students, postdocs, and visitors. Given the interdisciplinary and collaborative nature of CNetS, many researchers belong to more than one group.

• Complex Networks Collaboratory (Cx-Nets)
• Networks & agents Network (NaN)
• Complex Adaptive Systems and Computational Intelligence (CASCI)
• Adaptive Behavior and Cognition—West (ABC-West)
• Artificial Life (ALife)
• Laboratory for the Modeling of Biological and Socio-technical Systems (MoBS)

The Center for Complex Networks and Systems Research (CNetS) is part of the Pervasive Technology Institute of Indiana University and the School of Informatics and Computing. The center was established in 2009 to consolidate and enhance the research efforts of the complex systems group, which has been active within the School since 2004. CNetS is meant to foster interdisciplinary research in all areas related to complex systems.

The types of problems that we work on include mining usage and traffic patterns in technological networks such as the Web and the Internet; studying the interaction between social dynamics and online behaviors; modeling the evolution of complex social and technological networks; developing adaptive, distributed, collaborative, agent-based applications for Web search and recommendation; understanding complex biological networks and complex reaction in biochemistry; developing models for the spread of diseases; understanding how coordinated behavior arises from the dynamical interaction of nervous system, body, and environment; studying social human behavior; exploring reasons underlying species diversity; studying the interplay between self-organization and natural selection; understanding how information arises and is used in biological systems; and so on. All these examples are characterized by complex nonlinear feedback mechanisms and it is now being increasingly recognized that the outcome of such interactions can only be understood through mathematical and computational models.

We have a wonderful computing  and caffeine infrastructures to support some of our projects.

Collaborators

CNetS embodies mathematicians, physicists, biologists, psychologists, cognitive scientists, information scientists, linguists, and computer scientists, emphasizing lively and multidisciplinary teamwork with other research groups within the university, in the US and abroad. For example, within IU we presently have joint collaborations with the Cognitive Science Program, the Biocomplexity Institute, the School of Library and Information Science, the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, the Center for Data and Search Informatics, the Data to Insight Center, and other groups within Informatics. Outside IU, CNetS is part of the Complex Networks Collaboratory together with the Institute for Scientific Interchange in Torino, Italy, and the Centre de Physique Théorique at the University of Marseille, France. CNetS is also affiliated with the FLAD Computational Biology Collaboratorium at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciencia in Lisbon, Portugal. Finally, we have strong collaborative and support ties with the University of Turin’s Computer Science Department, Google Research, and Yahoo! Research.

CNetS is a member of WSTNet, the Web Science Network of Laboratories established by the Web Science Trust, which combines some of the world’s leading academic researchers in Web Science. CNetS is also a member of the Gephi Consortium, which supports the development of Gephi, an open source software for the visualization and analysis of large networks in real-time.

Our Sponsors

CNetS research is funded by a number of agencies, including Lilly Endowment Inc., National Science Foundation, James F. McDonnell Foundation, DARPA, NIH, IU Research, the School of Informatics and Computing, and Google.

Talk Series

The Talk Series on Networks and Complex Systems organized by Katy Börner is every Monday 6-7p in Wells Library 001 during the academic year. Talks are open to all Indiana University faculty and students interested in network analysis, modeling, visualization, and complex systems research. A major intent is to cross-fertilize between research done in the social and behavioral sciences, research in natural sciences such as biology or physics, and research on Internet technologies.

Our Mailing List

I-COMPLEX-L is a mailing list of IU people with a general interest in complex systems. To subscribe, send an email to this address with the subject: subscribe I-COMPLEX-L YourFirstName YourLastName (leave the body of the message empty).