Center for Network Science (CNS)
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.
The Center for Network Science provides an organizational framework to research in a field that evolved to be arguably the most interdisciplinary over the last fifteen years. With origins in anthropology, and deep roots in sociology, network approaches were recently re-invigorated by a massive interest in the natural sciences. This is an area where ideas from physics (such as phase transition dynamics) is applied to social phenomena (such as social movement mobilization).
