Parallel Brainstorming Sessions: CI for SNA

November 4, 2005
3:30 - 4:30 pm (8 Groups)

Four sets of questions will be brainstormed in parallel by eight groups. Group leaders are identified in bold.

The topics were selected to cover the major drivers for the development of CI for a scientific community, such as SNA: theoretical and societal challenges, data, algorithms and compute resources, and interfacing with and between users.

The one hour brainstorming session could be used as follows:

1. 10 minutes to generate a list of major challenges for SNA research and practice.
2. 10 minutes to select from the list generated in 1) those challenges that could be solved using CI.
3. 40 minutes to select from the list generated in 2) one or two challenges and illustrate the potential utility of CIs using concrete examples.

Deliverables: Two lists from 1) and 2) and one to two concrete examples of how CI can be used to address SNA challenges.

(SNA.I) Data
What challenges do/will SNA researchers and practitioners face in terms of the collection and management of data? Consider issues such as size, complexity (e.g., multilevel), diversity (e.g., in formats, static vs. dynamic, streaming), sources (e.g., online streaming and static database queries) of data? What are the characteristics (size, number, formats, etc.) of network data sets that will need to be served in 5 years? What 'killer' network datasets exist or should be created? What data resources will be required to support tomorrow's SNA?

Group SNA.I.1 (Room 1104): David Knoke, Gavin La Rowe, Matt Arrott, Cristina Beldica, Raymond Plante, Danyel Fisher, Kirby Vandivort, Hank Green

Group SNA.I.2 (Room 1016): Lada Adamic, Madhav Marathe, Chris McCarty, Bill Michener, Steve Corman, Ed Palazzolo, Doug Gregor

(SNA.II) Algorithms and Compute Resources
What challenges do/will SNA researchers and practitioners face in terms of the analysis, simulation and visualization of network data? What are the challenges for the statistical and mathematical modeling of networks, algorithm complexity and optimization, creating itineraries for data to be processed by multiple visual-analytic tools and scalability? What computing resources will be required to support tomorrow's SNA?

Adoption issues—what conditions would algorithm developers and users require? (license, documentation, acknowledgements, etc.) What 'killer' algorithms/services exist or should be created? How many services are anticipated in 5 years? What types? How many SNA developers and users would use a SNA-CI in 1, 5, 10 years?

Group SNA.II.1 (Room 2004): Tom Snijders, Carter Butts, Sean Mason, Robert Ackland, Stephen Eubank, Andrew Seary, Randy Butler, Xinrong Lei

Group SNA.II.1 (Room 2100): Vlado Batagelj, Bill Richards, Jonathon Cummings, Michael Welge, Christian Steglich, Bruce Herr, Mengxiao Zhu, Bethany Wotal

(SNA.III) User Interface & Collaboration Services
What challenges do/will SNA researchers and practitioners face when aiming to understand, communicate, and collaborate on research utilizing complex network datasets? What user interfaces might work best? What collaboration services might be most critical? What user interface and collaboration services will be required to support tomorrow's SNA?

In the concrete example, please describe the basic functionality of for the user interface and collaboration services, provide a sketch of the interface and services, and explain major function/components. How would researchers (developers and users) within the network community use it?

Group SNA.III.1 (Room 3004): Catherine Plaisant, W. Bradford Paley, Donna Cox, Chris Mueller, Eytan Adar, Michael Piasecki, Raquell Holmes, David Brandon, Annie Wang

Group SNA.III.2 (Room 4000): Munindar Singh, David De Roure, Jim Myers, Tom Finholt, Mark Gahegan, Ramon Sanguesa, Gary Giovino, Shashikant Penumarthy

(SNA.IV) Grand Scientific and Societal Challenges
What grand scientific and societal challenges can SNA enabled by CI help address? What are the key research questions in network theory and science that can be addressed by SNA's use of CI? How would specific aspects of the CI (e.g., data, compute, collaboration, etc.) enable the community to address these scientific and theoretical challenges?

What are the key societal challenges that can be addressed by the SNA's community use of CI? How specifically can a cyberinfrastructure help the SNA community address these challenges? Describe a scenario of using CI to address specific theoretical/societal challenges. What negative consequences can emerge in the absence of a CI to support SNA address these societal challenges?

Group SNA.IV.1 (Room 4004): David Lazer, Stanley Wasserman, Caroline Haythornthwaite, Roger Leenders, David Sallach, Eszter Hargittai, Dan Atkins, Thom Dunning

Group SNA.IV.1 (Room 1102): Michael Macy, Erik Jakobbson, Laura Koehly, Peter Monge, Larry Brandt, Garry Robins, Bob Wilhelmson, Roberto Dandi

National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

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Last updated January 24, 2006