The International School and Conference on Network Science, also called NetSci, is an annual conference focusing on networks. It is organized yearly since 2006 by the Network Science Society. Physicists are especially prominently represented among the participants, though people from other backgrounds attend as well. The study of networks expanded at the end of the twentieth century, with increasing citation of some seminal papers.
Following this increase in interest from the scientific community, network science was examined by the National Research Council (NRC), the arm of the US National Academies in charge of offering policy recommendations to the US government. NRC assembled two panels, resulting in recommendations summarized in two NRC Reports, offering a definition of the field of network science. These reports not only documented the emergence of a new research field, but highlighted the field’s role for science, national competitiveness and security. The NetSci conference series was set up in 2006 to address the need of the new and emerging highly interdisciplinary network science community to meet and exchange ideas. The NetSci conference has been a yearly event since then. In 2015, a shorter regional conference, called NetSci-X, was added.
History
The formal NetSci conference series was preceded by several meetings: RESEARCH WORKSHOP ON GRAPH THEORY AND STATISTICAL PHYSICS, ICTP Trieste May 22–25 (2000) XVIII Sitges Conference (2002) COSIN Project Midterm Conference (2003) CNLS Annual Conference 2003: Networks, Structure, Dynamics and Function, May 12–26, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Organized by Zoltán Toroczkai, Eli Ben-Naim, Hans Frauenfelder, Pieter Swart, supported by Los Alamos National Laboratory. Aveiro Conference CNET 2004 August 29–September 2 (2004) School and Workshop on Structure and Function of Complex Networks, ICTP Trieste May 16–28 (2005)
In 2006 these events became part of an organized structure with one network conference per year.
NetSci 2006 May 16–25, Indiana University Bloomington, USA. Organized by Albert-László Barabási, Katy Börner, Noshir Contractor, Alessandro Vespignani and Stanley Wasserman. NetSci 2007 May 20–25, New York Hall of Science, USA NetSci 2008 June 23–27, Norwich University, UK NetSci 2009 June 29-July 3, INFM, Istituto Veneto, Venice, ITALY. Organized by Guido Caldarelli and Vittoria Colizza. NetSci 2010 May 10–14, Northeastern University/MIT Boston, USA NetSci 2011 June 1–6, Hungarian Academy of Science, Budapest, HUNGARY NetSci 2012 June 18–22 Northwestern University, Evanston, USA NetSci 2013 June 3–7, Royal Library, Technical University of Denmark, Copenhagen, Denmark. Organized by Petter Holme and Sune Lehmann (general chairs) NetSci 2014 June 2–6, University of California, Berkeley, USA. Organized by Raissa D'Souza and Neo Martinez. NetSci 2015 June 1–5, University of Zaragoza, SPAIN NetSci 2016 May 30–June 3, Korean Academy of Science, Seoul, Korea. Organized by Hawoong Jeong (general chair), Guanrong Chen (co-chair), and Reka Albert (co-chair). NetSci 2017 June 19–23, held in Indianapolis, USA, and organized by the Indiana University Network Science Institute, with Olaf Sporns and Filippo Menczer as general co-chairs. The 2017 conference was the largest yet, with 680 registrations from 29 countries. The event featured three keynote speakers, 10 plenary speakers, 22 pre-conference satellite workshops and 23 technical sessions with about 130 oral presentations and 218 posters. NetSci 2018 June 1–15, 2018, Paris, France Organised by A. Barrat and Vittoria Colizza NetSci 2019 May 27–31, 2019, Vermont, USA NetSci 2020 ONLINE September 17–25 (before COVID-19 pandemic was originally planned for July 6–10), Rome, Italy Organised by Guido Caldarelli, Giulio Cimini, Tommaso Gili, Andrea Nicolai Networks 2021 (joint Sunbelt and NetSci conference) ONLINE July 5–10 NetSci 2022 July 25–29, Shanghai, China NetSci 2023 July 10–14, Vienna, Austria
In 2015, the Network Science Society added an additional, shorter regional conference, called NetSci-X, held in January: