CS 598 Methods and Applications in Network Analysis
Spring 2025
Dept of Computer Science
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Spring 2025
Dept of Computer Science
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
This CS 598 course is centered around the concepts of community detection and search, analysis of large networks, development of realistic network simulators, network growth models, and evaluation techniques. Emphasis is placed on real-world problems in the general area of scientometrics.
There are three components to the course. a) Assignments b) Lectures c) Projects. Grades are assigned based on satisfactory completion of assignments, required class presentations, participation in class discussions, and assessed quality of course projects.. A successfully completed course project should be "near-ready" for submission to a conference or journal. Students are strongly encouraged to publish results from these projects and the instructors will work with students to support manuscript submission.
Minimum Required Skills: The ability to retrieve data from relational databases and APIs and analyze these data in tabular and graph formats. Intermediate programming ability in a scripting language such as Python, statistical analysis, cluster computing and Linux environments are necessary. The instructional campus cluster will be available to the students for the duration of the course. Minimal required skills will be evaluated through the first assignment after which, advice on whether to remain registered will be provided to each student.
Participating students will explore scientific questions, analyze data, develop new methods or apply existing ones. The course is taught by George Chacko and Tandy Warnow. It is designed for graduate students in computer science. Students from other disciplines are welcome but must have approval from an instructor.
CS 598 Computational Scientometrics was first taught in the fall of 2022. While the objectives of this course remain roughly equivalent, several changes that reflect prior experience from the fall of 2022 are being applied in the interest of a stronger learning experience. Lectures and critical discussion of research literature will be more tightly coupled to designing and executing a required research project.
Students are encouraged to work in pairs on their research projects, which must be presented to and approved by the instructors before work can commence. Building upon existing projects is permitted with the understanding that no credit will be given for work that was completed before the course began.
Lectures and classes will be online. Office hours will be both virtual and in-person. This course has a required in-person activity– at least one in-person presentation of a course project proposal. You will need to schedule this event with the instructors; it will not take place during the class lecture but may occur during in-person office hours.
Class Presentation: 20%
Homework Assignments: 10%
Class participation: 5%
Course Project: 65%
Office Hours Chacko: Mondays: 4-5 pm If no one has shown up by 4:15 pm, the session will end.
Office Hours Warnow: Tuesday: 4-5 pm If no one has shown up by 4:15 pm, the session will end.
Invited Lectures:
David Bader, Distinguished Professor and Director of the Institute for Data Science, NJIT, USA (Jan 28, 2025)
Jodi Schneider, PhD. Associate Professor, I-School, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (Feb 6, 2025)
Jens Peter Andersen, PhD. Senior Researcher, Dept. of Political Science, Aarhus University, Denmark (Feb 13, 2025)
Meher Pindiprolu, PhD, ETH Zurich, Switzerland (Feb 25, 2025)
Jacob Habinek, PhD. Associate Professor, Institute for Analytical Sociology, Linkoping University, Sweden (March 4, 2025)
2025-01-21 Introductory Lecture-I Chacko Course overview
2025-01-23 Introductory Lecture-II Warnow Introduction to Community Detection
2025-01-28 David Bader: NJIT, USA Massive-scale Graph Analytics
2025-01-30 Chacko: Quantitatively Elucidating Citation Theory
Gilbert, N. (1997) ‘A Simulation of the Structure of Academic Science’ Sociological Research Online, vol. 2, no. 2
2025-02-04 Warnow: Edge Connectivity and Stochastic Block Models
https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.10464
2025-02-06 Jodi Schneider UIUC: Analyzing the Consistency of Retraction Indexing and Why it Matters?
https://infoqualitylab.org/projects/risrs2020/
2025-02-11 Chacko: K-core clustering and community search
2025-02-13 Jens Peter Andersen: Aarhus University Redundancy and constraint in social networks
2025-02-18 Review of Projects - I
Each group or individual presents a summary of intent 5 minutes and answers questions for 5-10 min
2025-02-20 Minhyuk Park & review of assignment 1
Using the campus cluster for network analysis
2025-02-25 Meher Chaitanya Pindiprolu ETH Zurich, Influence Processes on Social Networks
2025-02-27 Warnow FastEnsemble: a new clustering consensus method
2025-03-04 Jacob Habinek Linkoping University Evaluating science and scientists
2025-03-06 Chacko TBA
2025-03-11 Review of Projects- II
2025-03-13 Assigned Paper Presentation
Andrew Nam Silva et al. (2020) 10.1162/qss_a_00070
Ruining Zhao Meghanathan, N,. (2024) 10.1007/s41109‐024‐00667‐7
2025-03-18 [Spring Break]
2025-03-20 [Spring Break]
2025-03-25
Yuanxi Fu Touwen et al. (2024) 10.1038/s41598-024-61940-4
Vikram Ramavarapu Eom and Fortunato (2011) 10.1371/journal.pone.0024926
2025-03-27
Ted Ledford Aksnes, D. 2019, 10.1177/2158244019829575
Summary Discussion (students) of presentations by Andrew, Ruining, Yuanxi, Vikram, and Ted.
2025-04-01: Day off before detailed presentations begin
2025-04-03: Ruining and Vikram
2025-04-08: [open discussion]
2025-04-10 Yuanxi
2025-04-15 Andrew
2025-04-17 Ted
2025-04-22 Ruining and Vikram
2025-04-24 Yuanxi
2025-04-29 Andrew
2025-05-01 Ted
2025-05-06 Final Reports Due
2025-05-08 In-person discussions 2130 Siebel