Section: Partnerships and Cooperations

International Initiatives

MALENA

• Title: Machine Learning for Network Analytics

• International Partner (Institution - Laboratory - Researcher):

  • Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (India) - Electrical Communication Engineering - Vivek Borkar

• Start year: 2017

• See also: http://www-sop.inria.fr/members/Konstantin.Avratchenkov/MALENA.html

• In the past couple of decades network science has seen an explosive growth, enough to be identified as a discipline of its own, overlapping with engineering, physics, biology, economics and social sciences. Much effort has gone into modelling, performance measures, classification of emergent features and phenomena, etc, particularly in natural and social sciences. The algorithmic side, all important to engineers, has been recognised as a thrust area (e.g., two recent Nevanlinna Prize (J. Kleinberg 2006 and D. Spielman 2010) went to prominent researchers in the area of network analytics). Still, in our opinion the area is yet to mature and has a lot of uncharted territory. This is because networks provide a highly varied landscape, each flavour demanding different considerations (e.g., sparse vs dense graphs, Erdös-Rényi vs planted partition graphs, standard graphs vs hypergraphs, etc). Even adopting existing methodologies to these novel situations is often a nontrivial exercise, not to mention many problems that cry out for entirely new algorithmic paradigms. It is in this context that we propose this project of developing algorithmic tools, drawing not only upon established as well as novel methodologies in machine learning and big data analytics, but going well beyond, e.g., into statistical physics tools.

THANES

• Title: THeory and Application of NEtwork Science

• International Partner (Institution - Laboratory - Researcher):

  • Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) - Department of Computer and Systems Engineering - Daniel Ratton Figueiredo

  • Purdue University (USA) - Department of Computer Science - Bruno Ribeiro

• Start year: 2017

• See also: https://team.inria.fr/thanes/

• During the 3-year lifetime of this joint team we plan to move beyond the study of a single network and focus on multiplex networks, i.e. multiple interacting networks. Multiplex networks have recently raised as “one of the newest and hottest themes in the statistical physics of complex networks.” They originate from the observation that many complex systems, ranging from living organisms to critical infrastructures, operate through multiple layers of distinct interactions among their constituents. In particular work on the co-evolution of the different layers of a multiplex network and on how epidemics spread in such setting.

• Title: Dynamic Games Methods: theory, algorithmics and application

• International Partners (Institution - Laboratory - Researcher):

  • Univ. de Chile (Chile) - Department of Industrial Engineering - Fernando Ordóñez

  • Univ. Nacional de Rosario (Argentina) - Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Ingeniería y Agrimensura - Eugenio Della Vecchia

  • CNRS (France) - LIP6 - Emmanuel Hyon

• Duration: 2016 - 2017

• Start year: 2016

• See also: https://project.inria.fr/dygame

• Stochastic Dynamic Game Theory is developing in Engineering sciences and is in need of more theoretical results, algorithms and applications. This project brings together researchers from Applied Mathematics, Operations Research and Economics, with the objective of contributing to these aspects. It will more specifically concentrate on agent rationality and the game structure, look for efficient solution algorithms by crossing Applied Mathematics and Operations Research techniques, and apply the results to problems originating from, on the one hand, security/conservation concerns, and on the other hand, sustainable development problems.

• Title: Monte Carlo and Learning Schemes for Network Analytics

• International Partners (Institution - Laboratory - Researcher):

  • IIT Bombay (India) - Department of Electrical Engineering - Prof. V.S. Borkar;

  • IIS Bangalore (India) - Department of Electrical Engineering - Prof. R. Sundaresan.

• Duration: 2014 - 2017

• Start year: 2014

• The project aims to approach various computation problems in network analytics by means of Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) and related simulation techniques as well as machine learning algorithms such as reinforcement learning, ant colony optimization, etc. This will include network diagnostics such as ranking, centrality measures, computation on networks using local message passing algorithms, resource allocation issues pertaining to networks and network-based systems such as the internet, peer-to-peer networks, social networks. The work will involve both development of analytical tools and extensive validation thereof using simulation studies. The research will draw upon techniques from graph theory, probability, optimization, and distributed computation.