Network models find applications in several areas including telecommunications, social and economic networks, transportation networks, and biological networks. The recent surge in interest, especially in the area of social networking, has been triggered by the widespread use of the Internet to enable and enhance social interactions (for instance, via online social networks like Facebook, Twitter, etc.).

The two workshops will cover techniques for modelling and optimizing networks in the context of application areas such as online social and economic networks, transportation networks, wireless networks, and biological systems, all of which are areas where network models naturally arise. The workshops will comprise of three tutorials (tentatively on (i) Online Social Networks Modelling and Optimization, (ii) Machine Learning: Principles and Applications, and (iii)Mean-field Approximations), and several seminar-style talks from researchers, with the aim of not only sharing research results but also exposing young researchers to new techniques and problem areas and motivating them to pursue research in these areas.

The major themes of the workshops are the following.

• Information spread on networks
• Opportunistic networks
• Machine learning for large-scale social networks
• Network games and economics
• Distributed learning and self-organization
• Mean-field interaction models for networks

The technical presentations at these workshops will be accessible even to first year post-graduate students, who have a good facility with engineering mathematics. Post-graduate students working in areas related to networks of all sorts can benefit significantly and are strongly encouraged to attend this event. If you are interested in Networks, you might also want to check out the conference COMSNETS 2014, that is being held in the week preceding this workshop:

http://comsnets.org/comsnets2014/