Politecnico di Milano
8-9-10, 15-16-17 October, 2024

Lecturers
 
Program
 
Registration
 
Exam for PhD students

Venue
 
Contacts

Last update: May 20, 2024

AIMS AND SCOPE

A network is a set of agents connected in pairs by links. Despite the simplicity of this definition, the theoretical properties of networks are extremely rich and diverse. Networks prove to be extremely flexible in modeling a wide variety of phenomena characterized by a large number of interconnected elementary units: social networks, the Internet and the WWW, sensor networks, ecological communities, biochemical systems, energy transport networks, economic and financial systems, are just a few examples.

The course falls within the scope of the educational activities organized by the Ph.D. programme in Information Technology at Politecnico di Milano, but is not only aimed at doctoral students, but at all researchers operating in any areas of science and engineering and interested in theory and applications of complex networks. The aim is to illustrate the fundamental theoretical notions as well as some applications in specific fields. First, basic definitions, some useful indicators and the most important network models are introduced. Dynamic processes evolving on the network will then be considered, to illustrate how phenomena such as cascading failures, epidemic/information diffusion, or evolutionary games in structured populations can evolve.

LECTURERS

Giovanni Bonaccorsi, DIG, Politecnico di Milano [webpage]
Renato Casagrandi, DEIB, Politecnico di Milano [webpage]
Giuseppe De Nicolao, Universita' di Pavia [webpage]
Fabio Dercole, DEIB, Politecnico di Milano [webpage]
Andrea Flori, DIG, Politecnico di Milano [webpage]
Lorenzo Mari, DEIB, Politecnico di Milano [webpage]
Paco Melia', DEIB, Politecnico di Milano [webpage]
Carlo Piccardi, DEIB, Politecnico di Milano [webpage]
Francesco Pierri, DEIB, Politecnico di Milano [webpage]
Lucia Tajoli, DIG, Politecnico di Milano [webpage]

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PROGRAM

The language of the course (lectures and notes) is English.

Tuesday, October 8  9:00 - 13:00  [Piccardi - Pierri]	Networks and their representation Examples of real world networks. Undirected/directed, weighted/unweighed networks. Adjacency and Laplacian matrices. Bipartite networks and projections. Connected and strongly connected components. Quantifying network properties Distance and diameter. Clustering coefficient. Degree, strength, and degree distribution. Correlated networks.
Wednesday, October 9  9:00 - 13:00  [Piccardi - Pierri]	Network models Random (Erdos-Renyi) networks - Scale-free (Barabasi-Albert) networks - Small-world (Watts-Strogatz) networks Centralities Degree, betweenness, closeness, eigenvector centralities, hub/authority scores, PageRank
Thursday, October 10  9:00 - 13:00  [Piccardi - Pierri]	Mesoscale network analysis Community detection. Modularity. Random-walk-based methods. Core-periphery analysis. Applications. Software for network analysis Gephi, Matlab, Python/Networkx

 
 

Tuesday, October 15  9:00 - 12:00  [Tajoli - Flori - Bonaccorsi]	Networks in economics - The World Trade Network: International trade. Sectors. Centrality, complexity, communities. - The configuration and spillovers of the EU Emission Trading System: The lecture will explore the connectedness within the main system for the trade of the European allowances, namely the EU ETS. Indeed, the way EU ETS counterparts manage their allowances may reflect market shocks on carbon prices, while the latter may be in turn affected also by how EU ETS counterparts actively trade allowances. Using spillover tests in the time and frequency domains we analyze the connectedness in the system and how it relates to the trade network configuration of the EU ETS. - Network analysis of policy impacts: The lecture will explore how the network structure of social relations can be exploited for public policy interventions. In particular, referring to the recent COVID-19 pandemic, the lecture will show how the network of mobility of individuals can be used to assess the effectiveness of policy interventions against the virus. Furthermore, to assess the economic impact of these interventions, the network of payment transactions will be analyzed. The analyses will draw from methods in social network analysis, machine learning and econometrics.
Tuesday, October 15  12:00 - 13:00    [De Nicolao]	Opinion dynamics in social networks Opinion dynamics. Social networks. Stochastic multi-agent systems. Markov processes. Social power. Vote manipulation.
Wednesday, October 16  9:00 - 11:00  [Pierri]	Investigating (dis)information diffusion on online social networks Information diffusion. Online social networks (Twitter, Facebook). Disinformation.
Wednesday, October 16  11:00 - 13:00  [Dercole]	Evolutionary games on networks Evolutionary games in finite and infinite well-mixed populations. Social dilemmas. Best response and imitation processes of strategy update. Evolutionary games in structured populations: from models to experimental results. The roles of direct and network reciprocity in fostering cooperation.
Thursday, October 17  9:00 - 10:00  [Piccardi]	Network robustness Topological level-of-service indicators. Robustness to failures and attacks. Cascading failures.
Thursday, October 17  10:00 - 13:00  [Mari - Casagrandi - Melia']	Networks in epidemiological and ecological processes - Epidemiological processes on networks: SIR-like processes on networks. Epidemiological thresholds. Disease control via network topology. Spatially-explicit networks. Multi-layered networks. Environmental connectivity. Human mobility using big-data (mobile-phone traces). Covid-19. - Network metrics for managing spatially extended fisheries

 
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REGISTRATION

The application is mandatory:

• If you are a PhD student at Politecnico di Milano, you must include the course in your study plan by the usual procedure (read the notes below on the exam for PhD students).
• If you work at Politecnico di Milano but you are not a PhD student, please write to phd-inf@polimi.it.
  
• If you do not work at Politecnico di Milano but in another university, research centre, or company, please follow the instructions here.
  

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EXAM FOR PHD STUDENTS

If you are a PhD student at Politecnico di Milano and want to pass the course exam (5 credits):

• You will have to attend at least 70% of the lessons (i.e. at least 4 days out of 6: your will be asked to sign the attendance sheet once a day).
  

• After the end of the course, but by January 1st, 2025, write an email to Francesco Pierri (francesco.pierri@polimi.it). Specify if you are interested in a specific topic and/or in taking the exam with a specific lecturer.

• You will be assigned a lecturer who will take care of your exam entirely. You will agree with her/him on the topic of your exam: the lecturer will give you a paper (or a small set of papers) to study.

• The form of your exam will also be agreed: written report (approx. 4-6 single space paces) or oral presentation (approx. 20 minutes, with slides). Both will contain an extended summary of the paper(s) and your personal criticisms of the content and/or style, suggestions for improvements, possible applications, etc. 

• The exam must be completed (report delivered or oral presentation given) by July 1, 2025. Please note that unreasonable timeframes cannot be accepted (e.g., due to deadlines in your institutional duties). After the request, it will take approximately two weeks for the assignment of a paper/lecturer. Subsequently it is reasonable to expect no less than 30 days to prepare the report/presentation.
  

The same regulations apply if you are a PhD student from another university and have to take an exam (important: you must also sign the attendance sheets).

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VENUE

 
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CONTACTS

For enquiries about the content of the course please contact Carlo Piccardi (carlo.piccardi@polimi.it) or Francesco Pierri (francesco.pierri@polimi.it).

For enquires about the application procedure please contact phd-inf@polimi.it.

PhD students of the Politecnico's doctoral courses, please contact the secretariat of your doctorate in advance for any request relating to the application procedure or for any other administrative information. 

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