Last week I participated the biggest conference in our research area, NetSci2012. At the opening keynote, my research advisor, Luis Amaral, jokingly pointed out that most of the people sitting in the room were teenagers fifteen years ago, when the first batch of researchers directed their attention to the newly published works on complex networks. I calculated my age fifteen years ago, and found out I was not even a teenager: A kid according to myself and a little baby according to Luis (apparently he has a different measurement of childhood).
I began to think what I was probably doing fifteen years ago. Maybe I was digging in the mud to find earth worms to tear apart so that it can grow into two new earth worms. Or perhaps I was mixing vinegar and soy sauce for potential chemical reactions. But it is definite that I was not aware of the rapid progress in complex network science at that time.
Thirteen years after that, I was admitted to Northwestern University for graduate study. Thinking of joining a lab that uses computers for research, I stepped into Luis’ office one day in the fall quarter. I did not know Luis was an influential researcher in complex networks. I did not know Luis’ h-index was 46. Actually I did not even know what complex networks and h-index are! It was like a kid running into a workshop not knowing any of the tools.
But I managed to become (sort of) familiar with this area and began working on projects related to it. At the same time, I got to know a lot of talented people making efforts to push the research frontier forward, and I became friends of them. Filippo Radicchi, for example, babysitted me through the research project. His insights and patience made my life much easier. Satyam Mukherjee, for another example, always got excited when talking about cricket although I had no idea why he was so fanatic about an insect. Haroldo Rebeiro is one of the craziest people I have ever met, whose passion for research has amazed most of the people around him. And the best part is they are all from different parts of the world. I found there are Indians who dislike Gandhi, there are Spanish who hate bull fighting, and there are Brazilians who do not care about carnivals. And during the conference, I managed to match a lot of familiar names with real faces, so now when I read papers their smiling (or sour) faces will pop out in my mind. If I visualize the evolution of my social network on a world map, you would observe links going from me to different corners of the globe.
It is really great to be part of something new and exciting. Complex network science is only fifteen years old and is still growing. Textbooks is being written, society is forming and dedicated journal is being published. I am not able to predict what it will be like ten years later, but now I feel everything is alive and dynamic. I feel especially lucky and happy to be in a fantastic lab working with fantastic people.
I will not go further to be too sentimental, as I am not yet a cranky old man. I am still a baby in terms of age in complex network/system research. But when I become a cranky old man, I think I will sit on the porch of my house in the sunset, and get lost in memory when I was still a young PhD student.
(Picture from Katiebonn.com)
—Xiaohan Zeng