Society of Network Science

India Chapter

Launch of Netsci India Chapter at NetSciX2025 @ Indore

Prof. A. E. Motter addressing the audience at NetSciX 2025 on the launch of the NetSci India Chapter.

The 2025 edition of NetSciX, the signature winter conference of the Network Science Society, took place in Indore, India, from January 14-17 in Marriott Indore. The conference was organized by the Indian Institute of Technology Indore. The conference chairs were Sarika Jalan (IIT Indore, India) and Hiroki Sayama (Binghamton University, USA) with local organizing committee consisting of Manavendra Mahato and Bapan Ghosh. Presently, the Active National organizing committee is primarily consisting of Senthilkumar (Thiruvananthapuram), Aparna Rai (Ahmedabad), Vimal Kishore (Varanasi), Chandrakala Meena (Thiruvananthapuram), Sangeeta Ujjwal (Varanasi) and Manish Shrimali (Ajmer). The program chairs of the conference were Baruch Barzel (Israel), Albert Díaz-Guilera (Spain), Tiziana Di Matteo (UK), Francisco Aparecido Rodrigues (Brazil), Charo del Genio (Bulgaria), Chew Lock Yue (Singapore) and Seung-Woo Son (South Korea).

A total of 210 participants registered for this conference, including 61 foreign participants from the USA, Australia, Belgium, United Kingdom, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Austria, Chile, Egypt, Germany, Ghana, Russia and Turkey. This was the first time a NetSci society event took place in India. The previous editions of this winter conference series took place at Buenos Aires (2023), Porto (2022), Tokyo (2020), Santiago (2019), Hangzhou (2018), Tel Aviv (2017), Wroclaw(2016), Rio de Janeiro (2015).

NetSciX 2025 featured a pre-conference school on the 14th Jan on "Linking Network Science and Artificial Intelligence" a topic of great interest currently with surmount scope. The main conference started with a talk by Lakshmanan, a towering figure in nonlinear dynamics and recipient of the Vigyan Shri Award (2024) conferred by the Government of India. Following this, A.L. Barabási, renowned for his groundbreaking work in network science, delivered a keynote talk. Barabási is Robert Gray’s Professor of Network Science at Northeastern University and was awarded the 2024 Gothenburg Lise Meitner Award. Other keynote and invited speakers were O. Mokryn (Israel), P. Parmananda (India), S. Boccaletti (Italy), S. Scarpino (USA), E. Estrada (Spain), Y. Sano (Japan), Y. Ee Hou (Singapore), I. Z Kiss (USA), Eun Lee (South Korea), and F. Sorrentino (USA)

The conference also featured five focus sessions, including a session on Asian Network Science organized by Chew Lock Yue, Cheong Siew Ann and Cigdem Yalcin, comprising speakers from Australia, Malaysia, Turkey, South Korea, India and Singapore. The session also discussed strengthening the ties among Asian network scientists and avenues to foster collaborations. Another session on Recent advancements in Network Science was organized under the umbrella of the Gender in Physics working group, Indian Physics Association (IPA). The IPA formalized a Working Group on Gender in Physics to coordinate national efforts towards gender parity in the Indian physics profession. The poster awards featured a dedicated category where the presenter and author were women. To inculcate discussions in informal settings, special evening talks were organized with speakers Ram Ramaswamy speaking on network science in the Indian context and Adilson Motter discussing open problems in network science: "network of ideas". Also, under the banner of NetPlace, an informal dinner interaction session took place which was led by Barabási and Sanjay Puri, a leading Indian statistical physicist. The session offered a broader perspective on Network Science in an informal setting over food and drinks.

Another significant milestone of NetSciX 2025 was the launching of the NetSci India Chapter in the presence NetSci Society president, Adilson E. Motter.

For an Indian touch to the conference, there was a storytelling session based on Mahabharata and a guided video tour on the heritage of central India during the lunch breaks. A sightseeing tour to the historic city of Maheshwar, situated on the bank of Narmada, providing a stunning view of its palace, was organized. The conference dinner took place in Farzi Cafe: A modern Indian Bistro offering a full scenic view of Indore city.