Biological and Social Networks (SYBN)

The recent observation and study of complex network structures in the living world surrounding us, sparked an avalanche of research activity in the physics community. Examples are biology networks, spanning all scales from molecular communication networks in the genome, via neural networks to ecological food webs and species relationships. Other examples are the internet wiring and the World Wide Web, or social networks that range from email relationships to networks of sexual contacts. Methods from Theoretical Physics helped in understanding these systems, including new views on how epidemics spread on network structures, aspects of stability and robustness of communication networks, and are actively contributing to understanding the workings of our genome and complex diseases. This symposium will present a selected overview of this highly active field and sketch new perspectives for theoretical physics research in interdisciplinary applications.

Main Speakers:

Alessandro Vespignani
"Epidemic modeling: dealing with complex networks"

Barbara Drossel
"Properties of attractors and relevant nodes in random Boolean networks"

Kim Sneppen
"Physics perspectives on gene regulation"

Ricard Sole
"Evolution, tinkering and selection in complex networks"

Contributions:
Further contributed talks are possible. Also there is a poster session of the symposium that will take place in the afternoon (Monday 7th). Please submit your contributed talks and posters online until November 15th at:

http://www.dpg-physik.de/wyp2005/participant/submission.html.en

More detailed information: http://www.itp.uni-bremen.de/complex/SYBN.html.