Many systems that govern our everyday lives—from communication networks to the human brain—can be seen as networks of interconnected units. Traditionally, networks are equated with graphs where edges give pairwise relations between two units. However, in network dynamical systems, nonlinear higher-order interactions between more than two units often play a critical role in shaping the collective dynamical behavior of all units. For example, the spread of a disease depends not only on our behavior as pairs of individuals but also on how we behave in groups of more than two. Thus, elucidating the role of these higher-orde interactions is critical to understand and control the dynamics of complex systems that determine our lives and livelihoods, whether it is the spreading of a disease or the proper functioning of the human brain as a network of billions of neurons.
The new Marie Skłodowska-Curie Doctoral Network "BeyondTheEdge: Higher-Order Networks and Dynamics" to start on January 1, 2024 will identify the role of nonpairwise higher-order interactions in the emergence of complex dynamical behavior of networks of interacting units. BeyondTheEdge, coordinated by Christian Bick at the Department of Mathematics of the Vrije Universiteit (VU) Amsterdam, brings together key researchers from 18 partners from 10 countries across Europe and beyond. This international network is interdisciplinary (from mathematics to neuroscience) and includes partners from academia, private research institutes, and industry to train a cohort of 10 PhD students. Innovative training activities will ensure that all PhD students can apply their skills beyond the academic context and put them in perspective of the wider world. Recruitment of the PhD students across the network will start in early 2024.
BeyondTheEdge also builds on and brings together a diverse expertise from researchers locally in the Amsterdam area and the wider Netherlands to identify different aspects of higher-order interactions. This includes consortium members Christian Bick (VU; network dynamical systems), Linda Douw (Amsterdam UMC/VUmc; multiscale network neuroscience), Rikkert Hindriks (VU; statistics for neuroscience), Raffaella Mulas (VU; spectral (hyper)graph theory), Fernando Santos (UvA/DIEP; topological data analysis for neuroscience), and Vincent Traag (CWTS, Leiden University; network analysis of bibliometric data).
BeyondTheEdge also directly relates to Amsterdam Neuroscience through members Bick, Douw, Hindriks, and Santos, and includes a PhD project on higher-order methods in neuroscience.
More information will be available through the project website BeyondTheEdge.network in the coming months.