EU-China Summer School on
"Internet, Sciences, and Society"

Introduction

Started from an idea of Prof. Mario Rasetti, that we should promote research cooperation between EU and China in the area of Complexity Sciences, the first meeting took place in Torino, Italy in 2006. We set out the goal to organize once a year a summer school to bring together young students from various areas to interact and to have lectures from world's leading natural and social scientists.

In 2007 september Prof. Jianwei Zhang and Yi-Cheng Zhang have organized such a school in Beijing, where numerous students from China, Europe, and India participated an exciting event of two weeks. This year it is Europe's turn; we choose the venue in Warsaw for its dynamism, energy, and many young students who are active in the complexity Sciences there. The aim is to bring students from both natural and social sciences together, the fields represented will be psycology, sociology, information technology, computer sciences, physics, as well as online activists. There will be a small group of Chinese students (about ten) and European students (about twenty), plus some Eastern European participants and local students.

The school will last 4 days and with one extra day for social events. No participation fee is asked and to cover other local expenses, a limited number of fellowships is available for a few students. Besides, the organizers will try to assist in finding inexpensive accommodation.

Applications (CV in PDF and a short explanation why you would like to attend the school) should be addressed to: warsaw.school@gmail.com.

Scope

With the rapid advance of WWW many new challenges emerge that demand an interdisciplinary approach that is unprecedented. On the one hand we have the biwildering array of web2.0 applications like Facebook, Del.icio.us, Wikipedia, digg, et al pioneering in making people connected and information aggregated show fascinating promises and inspirations; on the other hand the scientific community slowly catching up with the trend and start to take a serious look as how to tackle the many phenomena that traditional tools are no longer suitable.

At this unique gathering we shall explore cooperations between the East and West, between Hard Sciences and Soft Sciences, and between Theory and Applications. Young students and researchers from very different background are strongly encouraged to attend. We shall have morning lectures and afternoons are devoted to working groups around various themas, for example? algorithms for reputation or quality, tagging and semantics, web user-dynamics, new startup models, etc.

Suggested reading

• Hassan Masum and Yi-Cheng Zhang, Manifesto for the Reputation Society, First Monday 9, July 2004 (link)
• Ciro Cattuto, Vittorio Loreto, and Luciano Pietronero, Semiotic dynamics and collaborative tagging, PNAS 104, 2007, 1461-1464 (link)
• Nigel Gilbert and Klaus G. Troitzsch, Simulation for the Social Scientist, Open University Press, 2005 ( PDF, a newer version is available with ISBN 0 335 21600 5)
• Yi-Cheng Zhang et al, Recommendation model based on opinion diffusion, EPL 80, 2007, 68003 (link)
• Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, The Architecture of Complexity - From Network Structure to Human Dynamics, IEEE Control Systems Magazine 27, 2007, 33-42
• B. H. Wang and T. Zhou, Traffic flow and efficient routing on scale-free networks: A survey, J. Korean Phys. Soc. 50, 2007, 134 -141 (PDF)
• Guido Caldarelli, Scale-Free Networks, Oxford University Press, 2007
• Andrzej Nowak and Robin R. Vallacher, Information and influence, IEEE: Intelligent Systems 1, 2005, 90-93 (PDF)
• Steven H. Strogatz, Exploring complex networks Nature 410, 2001, 268-276 (link)
• David Hales, Self-Organising, Open and Cooperative P2P Societies-From Tags to Networks, Lect. Notes. Artif. Intell. 3464, 2005, 123-137
• Douglas Rushkoff, Open Source Democracy, Demos, 2003 (PDF)

If you will attend the summer school and you have problem accessing some of these works, please contact us. We will send you electronic copies of the papers by e-mail.

Scientific Advisory Board

• Mark Jelasity (University of Szeged and Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Hungary)
• Xiaoming Li (School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science, Peking University, China)
• Joe McCauley (Physics Department University of Houston Houston & IDEAS, USA)
• Johan Pouwelse (Delft University of Technology, Netherland)
• Mario Rasetti (Polytechnic Institute of Turin, Italy)
• Sidney Redner (Physics Department, Boston University, USA)
• Sorin Solomon (Racah Institute of Physics, Hebrew University of Jerusalem & ISI, Israel)
• Jianwei Zhang (Computer Science Department, University of Hamburg, Germany)

Invited Speakers

• Guido Caldarelli (Centre Statistical Mechanics and Complexity, University La Sapienza, Italy):
  Models of human dynamics
• Nigel Gilbert (Department of Sociology, University of Surrey, UK):
  Computational social science
• David Hales (Delft University of Technology, Netherland):
  Internet Impact on sciences and society
• Xiaoming Li (School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science, Peking University, China):
  Internet in China: from peer-to-peer communities to search engines
• Vittorio Loreto (University La Sapienza, Italy):
  Tagging and semantics
• Hassan Masum (McLaughlin-Rotman Centre, Canada):
  Reputation society
• Andrzej Nowak (Center for Complex Systems Research and Institute for Social Studies, University of Warsaw, Poland):
  Information Technology Trends in Social Transitions
• Wang Yi (Google, China):
  Search engines
• Tao Zhou (Department of Physics, University of Fribourg):
  Traffic flow and efficient routing on complex networks

Organizers

• Andrzej Nowak (Center for Complex Systems Research and Institute for Social Studies, University of Warsaw, Poland)
• Yi-Cheng Zhang (Department of Physics, University of Fribourg, Swizerland)