Title:
CS 6/75995 Complex Networks
Spring
2009
Department
of Computer Science
Introduction:
Various large scaled networked systems such as peer-to-peer
networks, social networks, crowd sourcing systems (wikipedia for example), networked
games have quite conspicuously emerged among the most innovation
rich areas
in computer networking. These systems now represent the most
significant
development in computing since the web. Large scale networked
systems are
now being modeled, formalized, and even engineered based on distributed
hashing, self-organization, complex networking, and graph theories. It
has also
become a breeding ground of technical innovations. Researchers are
delving into
new territories of overlay network design, replication and caching,
publish/subscribe routing, distributed multicast, range query, etc.
This course
will introduce and discuss some of the now famous seminal experiments
in the
area such as Six Degrees of Seperation or Erdo’s Numbers.
While
discussing such brain stimulating observations made by scientists it
will also
teach analytical methods for understanding complex network systems.
Who Should Attend: This is a
graduate/doctoral level course. If you
are interested in conducting research in large scale
networked/web-based
systems, network design, strategic computing, cyber security, web-based
game design, search, data
mining, social network engineering, this course should make you
up-to-date and
conversant with the latest analytical tools being used by researchers.
Accelerated undergraduates planning to pursue a joint graduate degree
may also
take this course with special permission.
Introductory
Reading: To get a feel about the topics: A.-L.
Barabási, Scale-Free
Networks,Scientific American 288, 50-59 (2003).
Topics:
This new course- will try introduce the topic based on formal
foundation:
Intended Students: Doctoral and MS
students. If you are
an advanced Undergraduate and interested to pursue graduate studies see
me for
special permission. The course will be research intensive. Will require
you to
study advanced technical papers and produce a creative project/paper.
Text:
class notes. For each topic we will also read some research papers
after the lectures.
Grading:
Type |
Frequency |
Weight |
Assignments |
3 |
20% |
Critical Review/
Presentation |
1-2 |
20% |
Creative Project/ Survey |
1 |
20% |
Midterm Exam |
1 |
20% |
Final Exam |
1 |
20% |
Links:
1. World of
Warcraft.
2. Barabasi Lab.
3. Milgram's Six
Degrees of Separation