Networks are fundamental for our understanding of complex systems. Interactions between individual nodes in networks generate network motifs - small recurrent patterns that can be considered the network’s building-block components, providing certain dynamical properties. However, it remains unclear how network motifs are arranged within networks and what properties emerge from interactions between network motifs. In my talk, I will present a framework that we developed to explore the mesoscale-level behavior of complex networks. Considering network motifs as hypernodes, we define the rules for their interaction at the network’s next level of organization. We infer the favorable arrangements of interactions between network motifs into hyper-motifs from real evolved and designed networks data, including biological, neuronal, social, linguistic, and electronic networks. We mathematically explore the emergent properties of these higher-order circuits and their relations to the properties of the individual minimal circuit components they combine. This framework provides a basis for exploring the mesoscale structure and behavior of complex systems where it can be used to reveal intermediate patterns in complex networks, and to identify specific nodes and links in the network that are the key drivers of the network’s emergent properties.
About the speaker
About the speaker
Miri Adler graduated B.Sc. in Physics in 2010 at the Technion, and M.Sc. in Physics in 2013 at the Weizmann Institute. She then received a Ph.D. from the Weizmann Institute in 2019, studying design principle of biological circuits in Uri Alon’s lab. During her Ph.D., Miri developed theoretical frameworks to explore circuits at different scales, from regulatory circuits that allow cells to sense relative changes in their environment, to cell communication circuits that provide homeostasis of cell-type proportions in the tissue. Currently, Miri is a postdoctoral fellow at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, working with Prof. Ruslan Medzhitov (Yale), and previously with Prof. Aviv Regev. In her postdoctoral research, Miri uses a combination of mathematical models, network theory approaches, computational data analysis, and optimization theory to uncover the underlying principles that govern the collective behavior of cells in a tissue in health and disease. Miri is an EMBO postdoctoral fellow, a Zuckerman STEM leadership program fellow, a Fulbright alumna, and a recipient of the Israel National Postdoctoral Award Program for Advancing Women in Science.
Miri Adler graduated B.Sc. in Physics in 2010 at the Technion, and M.Sc. in Physics in 2013 at the Weizmann Institute. She then received a Ph.D. from the Weizmann Institute in 2019, studying design principle of biological circuits in Uri Alon’s lab. During her Ph.D., Miri developed theoretical frameworks to explore circuits at different scales, from regulatory circuits that allow cells to sense relative changes in their environment, to cell communication circuits that provide homeostasis of cell-type proportions in the tissue. Currently, Miri is a postdoctoral fellow at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, working with Prof. Ruslan Medzhitov (Yale), and previously with Prof. Aviv Regev. In her postdoctoral research, Miri uses a combination of mathematical models, network theory approaches, computational data analysis, and optimization theory to uncover the underlying principles that govern the collective behavior of cells in a tissue in health and disease. Miri is an EMBO postdoctoral fellow, a Zuckerman STEM leadership program fellow, a Fulbright alumna, and a recipient of the Israel National Postdoctoral Award Program for Advancing Women in Science.
