Modeling the Web

We investigated the emergence of scale-free and the so-called Power Law distributions and structures in different societal networks and also the Self Organized Criticality (SOC) phenomenon observed in complex systems. For example, we studied the emergence of hubs or important web pages in the Internet, and how the associated patterns can be explained by the competing roles played by age/experience and fitness/talent. The related paper, "Experience versus talent shapes the structure of the Web" was featured on the cover of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Sept. 16 2008 issue). It was widely covered by the international media, including by New Scientist (UK/USA), LiveMint (India), The Sudkurier (Germany), and CBC (Canada). Similarly, a related paper was one of the first ones to study what going “viral” means: “A theory of Web traffic” was published in the prestigious European Physics Letters and was covered by several online magazines as well.