iCeNSA is an interdisciplinary research center organized around network science problems in social, biological, biochemical, physical, environmental, financial, organizational, technical and defense systems.
As a research center, iCeNSA:
1. Develops a systems-level understanding of the fundamental processes and mechanisms that underly the structural, dynamical and functional properties of complex networks.
2. Develops and integrates novel mathematical and computational tools for network science.
iCeNSA's approach is to abstract, generalize, classify and synthesize features of domain specific network phenomena into systems-level descriptions, theories and tools, which can then be applied to other domain specific network problems.
iCeNSA's research repertoire originates from both pure academic concerns (fundamental component) and the needs of sponsoring agencies and industrial clients (applied component).
As part of an educational institution, iCeNSA provides a hands-on training environment in network science for undergraduates, graduate students and postdoctoral associates. Given the complexities of real-world systems we anticipate a growing need in academia, industry and government for personnel who have a problem solving mentality, an interdisciplinary and global understanding of networked systems and the ability to design practical and sound solutions using rigorous mathematical and computational tools, a need that iCeNSA strives to meet through its educational programs.
Facilities:
iCeNSA (approx 2,500sqft)) is located on the 3rd floor North wing of the Nieuwland Science Hall building, containing 3 faculty offices, one admin office, 5 student/postdoc offices with about 22 desk-spaces, I common/library area with a drop-down screen (occupancy 12) and 1 seminar room (occupancy 15). It also has 1 room designated for secure/sensitive data handling and computation. Large scale computational support and high-performance computing is provided by the Center for Research Computing (CRC) and Office of Information Technologies (OIT).