Conference on Complex Systems Close this Window
Albert-László Barabási Albert-László Barabási
Hofman Professor, Theoretical Physics, Notre Dame

The Architecture of Complexity:

From the topology of the WWW to the cell's genetic network

Networks are pervasive: they describe systems as diverse as the cell, the World Wide Web or the society. In the past few years we learned that the emergence of most networks is governed by simple but generic laws. These discoveries indicate that cells and complex man-made networks, such as the Internet or the world wide web, share the same architecture: they are all examples of scale-free networks. The scale-free nature of these complex webs has important consequences on their robustness against failures and attacks, with implications on the Internet's ability to survive attacks and failures, drug design, and our ability to decipher the delicate laws that lead to the emergence of life on Earth.

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