Section: Partnerships and Cooperations

National Initiatives

ANR DataRedux

Participants : Paulo Gonçalves [correspondant] , Rémi Gribonval, Marion Foare.

Duration of the project: February 2020 - January 2024.

DataRedux puts forward an innovative framework to reduce networked data complexity while preserving its richness, by working at intermediate scales (“mesoscales”). Our objective is to reach a fundamental breakthrough in the theoretical understanding and representation of rich and complex networked datasets for use in predictive data-driven models. Our main novelty is to define network reduction techniques in relation with the dynamical processes occurring on the networks. To this aim, we will develop methods to go from data to information and knowledge at different scales in a human-accessible way by extracting structures from high-resolution, diverse and heterogeneous data. Our methodology will involve the identification of the most relevant subparts of time-resolved datasets while remapping the remaining parts of the system, the simultaneous structural-temporal representations of time-varying networks, the development of parsimonious data representations extracting meaningful structures at mesoscales (“mesostructures”), and the building of models of interactions that include mesostructures of various types. Our aim is to identify data aggregation methods at intermediate scales and new types of data representations in relation with dynamical processes, that carry the richness of information of the original data, while keeping their most relevant patterns for their manageable integration in data-driven numerical models for decision making and actionable insights.

ANR Darling

Participants : Paulo Gonçalves [correspondant] , Rémi Gribonval, Marion Foare.

Duration of the project: February 2020 - January 2024.

This project meets the compelling demand of developing a unified framework for distributed knowledge extraction and learning from graph data streaming using in-network adaptive processing, and adjoining powerful recent mathematical tools to analyze and improve performances. The project draws on three major parallel directions of research: network diffusion, signal processing on graphs, and random matrix theory which DARLING aims at unifying into a holistic dynamic network processing framework. Signal processing on graphs has recently provided a comprehensive set of basic instruments allowing for signal on graph filtering or sampling, but it is limited to static signal models. Network diffusion on the opposite inherently assumes models of time varying graphs and signals, and has pursued the path of proposing and understanding the performance of distributed dynamic inference on graphs. Both areas are however limited by their assuming either deterministic graph or signal models, thereby entailing often inflexible and difficult-to-grasp theoretical results. Random matrix theory for random graph inference has taken a parallel road in explicitly studying the performance, thereby drawing limitations and providing directions of improvement, of graph-based algorithms (e.g., spectral clustering methods). The ambition of DARLING lies in the development of network diffusion-type algorithms anchored in the graph signal processing lore, rather than heuristics, which shall systematically be analyzed and improved through random matrix analysis on elementary graph models. We believe that this original communion of as yet remote areas has the potential to path the pave to the emergence of the critically needed future field of dynamical network signal processing.

Equipex FIT (Futur Internet of Things)

Participant : Éric Fleury [correspondant] .

Duration of the project: February 2011 - December 2019.

FIT was one of 52 winning projects in the Equipex research grant program. It will set up a competitive and innovative experimental facility that brings France to the forefront of Future Internet research. FIT benefits from 5.8 million euro grant from the French government. The main ambition is to create a first-class facility to promote experimentally driven research and to facilitate the emergence of the Internet of the future.

ANR SoSweet

Participant : Márton Karsai [correspondant] .

Duration of the project: November 2015 - November 2019.

The SoSweet project focuses on the synchronic variation and the diachronic evolution of the variety of French used on Twitter. The recent rise of novel digital services opens up new areas of expression which support new linguistic behaviours. In particular, social medias such as Twitter provide channels of communication through which speakers/writers use their language in ways that differ from standard written and oral forms. The result is the emergence of new varieties of languages. The main goal of SoSweet is to provide a detailed account of the links between linguistic variation and social structure in Twitter, both synchronically and diachronically. Through this specific example, and aware of its bias, we aim at providing a more detailed understanding of the dynamic links between individuals, social structure and language variation and change.

ANR DylNet

Participant : Márton Karsai [correspondant] .

Duration of the project: September 2016 - September 2020.

The DylNet project aims to observe and to characterise the relationships between childhood sociability and oral-language learning at kindergarten. With a view to this, it takes an multidisciplinary approach combining work on language acquisition, sociolinguistics, and network science. It will be implemented by following all the children ($\approx 220$) and teaching staff in one kindergarten over a 3-year period. The use of wireless proximity sensors will enable collection of social contacts throughout the study. The data on sociability will be linked to the results of language tests and recordings of verbal interactions used to follow the children's progress on both a psycholinguistic level (lexicon, syntax, pragmatics) and a sociolinguistic level (features showing belonging to a social group). The aim is to better understand the mechanisms of adaptation and integration at work when young children first come into contact with the school context.

Inria PRE LIAISON

Participant : Márton Karsai [correspondant] .

Duration of the project: November 2017 - December 2019.

This project implements unsupervised deep learning approaches to infer correlations/patterns that exist between dynamic linguistic variables, the mesoscopic and dynamic structure of the social network, and their socio-economic attributes. This interdisciplinary project is positioned at the crossroads of Natural Language Processing (NLP), Network Science, Data Science and Machine Learning.

More precisely, we develop a joint feature-network embedding, named AN2VEC (Attributed Network to Vector), which ultimately aims at disentangling the information shared by the structure of a network and the features of its nodes. Building on the recent developments of Graph Convolutional Networks (GCN), we use a multitask GCN Variational Autoencoder where different dimensions of the generated embeddings can be dedicated to encoding feature information, network structure, or shared feature-network information separately. This method thus defines a range of models whose performance in embedding a given data set varies depending with the allocation of dimensions. By exploring the behaviour of these models on synthetic data sets having different levels of feature-network correlation, we show (i) that embeddings relying on shared information perform better than the corresponding reference with unshared information, and (ii) that this performance gap increases with the correlation between network and feature structure, thus confirming that our embedding is able to capture joint information of structure and features.

HOTNET - IXXI

Participant : Márton Karsai [correspondant] .

Duration of the project: January 2019 - December 2021.

The purpose of the HOTNet (Higher-order representation of temporal networks) project is to develop a pipeline for the embedding of temporal networks that captures higher order correlations relevant for dynamical processes. We propose to detach from the straightforward representations of networks — as successions of static networks — by focusing on representations that better reflects the higher-order neighbourhood and temporal paths. To project plans to develop a framework that learns from this representation an embedding sufficient to estimate the outcome of spreading processes that might take place on top of the original network.

This is a small-scale collaborative project funded by the IXXI Complex System Institute to foster collaborations between MK and Laetitia Gauvin (ISI Torino) for the period of 2019-2021.

Inria & HCERES

Participant : Éric Guichard [correspondant] .

Bilateral project on the evolution of the Multi/inter-disciplinary of SHS.

An increasing number of researchers in SHS has the desire to develop new researches with computer scientists or mathematicians because they want to apply new methodologies (according to various or numerous data) or to develop older ones, which can now be easily implemented online. Some also develop a reflexion on their discipline, with the idea that epistemological questions are revitalized by the internet. This reality invite them to discuss with philosophers or with other SHS scientists who have the same intuition (eg: cartography, visualisation).

The project is hence to measure these new forms or inter-multi-disciplinarity. The main source will be the publications of all academics of French SHS laboratories, to find out who writes a paper with somebody of a different discipline and/or laboratories. All data are anonymized,

Inria IPL BetterNet

Participant : Éric Guichard.

An Observatory to Measure and Improve Internet Service Access from User Experience.

BetterNet aims at building and delivering a scientific and technical collaborative observatory to measure and improve the Internet service access as perceived by users. In this Inria Project Lab, we will propose new original user-centered measurement methods, which will associate social sciences to better understand Internet usage and the quality of services and networks with a particular focus on geography and cartography.