Formation of Looping Networks - from Nature to Models (24w5315)

The Banff International Research Station will host the “Formation of Looping Networks - from Nature to Models” workshop in Banff from July 7 - 12, 2024.

“Looping networks”

Networks are all around us: there are river networks, streets, cracks patterns, veins of leaves, ants nests, social networks. But they are also within us, for instance our blood vessels. Appart of the social networks, the particularity of these networks is to be drawn in physical space. Some are branched like trees, rivers networks or lightning, but many, especially in living matter, form loops. These loops are very useful in case of a disturbance, for instance when a blood vessel blocks or a street jamms, the flow can turn around and keep circulating.

What is surprising is that these networks are not well described. We start to know pretty well how to describe trees, or social networks, but we are missing a lot of information by not using the presence of these loops and their position in space. There is also no understanding of how they grow and appear. This is why this meeting happens: to bring together experts of these up to now separated subjects, to form a new community and bring discoveries around this common object.

The Banff International Research Station for Mathematical Innovation and Discovery (BIRS) is a collaborative Canada-US-Mexico venture that provides an environment for creative interaction as well as the exchange of ideas, knowledge, and methods within the Mathematical Sciences, with related disciplines and with industry. The research station is located at The Banff Centre in Alberta and is supported by Canada’s Natural Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), Alberta’s Advanced Education and Technology, and Mexico’s Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT).