Networks are everywhere. They describe how entities—people, objects, organisms, etc.—are connected and interact with each other. By studying the patterns of connections between elements in a variety of network systems, a group of young artists and high school students from the PENN Network Visualization Program discovered the governing principles of physical, biological, and social phenomena.
The PENN Network Visualization Program features young artists who spend time with scientists at Penn who are performing cutting edge research in network science as applied to social systems, human biology, and physical materials with the underlying goal of advancing bioengineering. During the 6-week internship program, artists interpret and capture the intricacies of these networks in novel ways.
The PENN Network Visualization Program is run by Dr. Danielle Bassett, an American physicist and systems neuroscientist who was the youngest individual to be awarded a MacArthur fellowship in 2014. She was also awarded a 2014 Sloan fellowship. Bassett is the Skirkanich Associate Professor of Innovation at the University of Pennsylvania, where she applies network science to the study of learning in the human brain in addition to the study of other complex physical and biological systems. She received a B.S. in physics from Pennsylvania State University in 2004, and her CPGS and Ph.D in physics from the University of Cambridge in 2005 and 2009 respectively.
Dr. Bassett will be giving a lecture on Friday, January 19th from 5:00 - 6:00 p.m. at Quorum, located at 3711 Market St. suite 800, Philadelphia PA 19104. The lecture will be followed by a reception with the artists of "Networks Within and Around Us" from 6:00 - 8:00 p.m. at Esther Klein Gallery (EKG), 3600 Market Street.