Network Science and Education 2026

NetSciEd 2026: The Symposium on Network Science and Education will be held in June 2026 as a satellite of the NetSci 2026 Conference at Boston, USA, following a series of successful previous editions. 

NetSciEd 2026 is a venue to discuss anything related to network science and education, including educational activities to teach/learn network science and applications of network science to understand, model, and improve educational systems and practices. Teachers, students and education researchers are welcome to participate, and we look forward to further discussions about developing a network science curriculum for K-12 students.

PROGRAM: The Satellite will take place on Monday June 1st, 2026 between 2:30pm - 6:00pm EST. See below for details of the program. Detailed schedule will be shared as we approach the day of the Satellite.

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS:

Contributed oral presentations will be 15 minutes long in total (including both talk and Q & A). If you are interested in presenting at NetSciEd 2026, please submit a brief abstract to Evelyn Panagakou (e.panagakou@northeastern.edu) by 20 April 2026.

Your abstract should:

* Include the title of your presentation, the list of authors and their affiliations, and the contact information (e-mail address) of the corresponding author.

* Include a summary of your presentation (up to 300 words).

* Be formatted as a single PDF file (maximum 2 pages including figures/tables, if any).

We will review your submissions and email notifications by 8 May 2026. 

TOPICS OF DISCUSSION:

Topics to be discussed at the Satellite include but are not limited to:

•     Outreach activities, tools, and materials

•     Curricular development and practices for teaching network science 

•     Use of network science concepts and tools to teach traditional subjects in K–12 education

•     Teacher education

•     Informal education

•     Network modeling and analysis of educational systems, curricular materials, classroom/school dynamics

•     Applications of network science for the improvement of education

ORGANIZERS:

Catherine Cramer (Woods Hole Institute, USA, catherine@woodsholeinstitute.org)

Ralucca Gera (Naval Postgraduate School, USA, rgera@nps.edu)

Evelyn (Evangelia) Panagakou (Northeastern University, USA e.panagakou@northeastern.edu — Main Contact)

Mason A. Porter (UCLA, USA, mason@math.ucla.edu )

Hiroki Sayama (Binghamton University, USA, sayama@binghamton.edu )

Stephen Uzzo (Woods Hole Institute, USA, stephen@woodsholeinstitute.org)

INVITED TALKS

Opportunities for Teaching Qualitative Critical Thought in Introductory Network Science: Revisiting Foundational Papers as Case Studies
Izabel Aguiar, Santa Fe Institute

Network Science as a discipline incorporates many modes of thought and draws upon many of the social sciences in its insights and motivations. However, because of how an introductory Network Science course is often positioned within institutions, its primary focus is often one of teaching a particular set of quantitative skills and intuitions to students. However, an introductory course on Network Science is a prime opportunity to expand who is included in our field, and to reevaluate how we envision the future of research within our field. In this talk I will discuss the opportunities of introducing qualitative critical thought as a key skill in network science by revisiting foundational papers in our discipline. By focusing on Granovetter's The Strength of Weak Ties, I will present alternative readings of the foundational paper which highlight key opportunities for incorporating insights from other social sciences into how we analyze networks. I will present a lesson plan for discussing this paper in the classroom focused around critically questioning key assumptions, and interrogating how they are (or are not) reflected in relevant social science literatures. By expanding how we teach introductory Network Science topics and foundational papers in our field, we have the opportunity to include critical modes of thought which, although are vital to impactful and resonant research, are not typically present in introductory courses.

Network Science for Science Education: From Curriculum Structure to Research Landscapes

Juan Fernández-Gracia &Paula Tuzón*

Network science offers powerful tools to study the complexity of educational systems, knowledge structures, concept building, and the social interactions that sustain educational processes. In this talk, we will first present an overview of current applications of network-based approaches in science education research, identifying major lines of work, methodological trends, and emerging directions in the field. We will then illustrate these possibilities through a recent curriculum analysis in the context of science subjects, where curriculum content is modeled as concept networks. This approach provides insights into issues such as improving curriculum coherence, combining subjects, and identifying conceptual communities and sequencing structures. Together, these studies highlight the potential of network science to provide new theoretical and methodological perspectives for science education research and curriculum analysis.

Online Interactive Network Science Notes for Advanced Undergraduates

Heather Zinn Brooks, Harvey Mudd College 

In the summer of 2024, we developed a set of public, online lecture notes for an advanced undergraduate course in network science. These notes are free online for any instructor to use at https://network-science-notes.github.io/. This course was explicitly designed for students who are interested in and fluent in mathematics and computation. To this end, we integrated both theoretical exercises and computational examples in the Python programming language throughout the notes. Live versions of lecture notes are supplied as Jupyter Notebooks which can be opened in Google Colab. Certain code components have been removed in the Colab notes, allowing instructors to use fill-in-the-blank live-coding with students during lectures. In-class time also included traditional lecture, active time on mathematical exercises, and creative coding tasks. In this talk, I will describe our approach to designing the online interactive lecture notes, reflect on the experience of network science students in undergraduate mathematics and computer science curricula at liberal arts colleges, and suggest some ways in which our resources might be used in other classroom contexts. This work is joint with Phil Chodrow (CS, Middlebury College).

CONTRIBUTED TALKS

Linking Language and Problems: A Network Analysis of COMAP Contests

Student Researchers: Karissa Maloney & Genaro SanchezFeliz, Ramapo College of New Jersey

Advisor: Amanda Beecher, COMAP: Director of Contests & Outreach (formerly Professor of Mathematics at Ramapo College of New Jersey)

The Consortium for Mathematics and its Applications (COMAP) organizes four international mathematical modeling contests each year, spanning middle school, high school, and two at the undergraduate levels. Across these contests, students engage with open-ended, real-world problems that emphasize modeling, interpretation, and communication. We use the contest problem statements to explore the structure of mathematical and applied thinking. In this project, we adopt a network science perspective to analyze the language of COMAP contest problems. We construct co-occurrence networks of key terms extracted from problem texts, using text analysis methods to identify and compare language choices within individual contests and across all four levels. These networks reveal how ideas, concepts, and themes shift or persist across educational stages. We use network measures to compare contest-specific and aggregate networks, highlighting similarities and differences in conceptual structure across grade levels. Our analysis demonstrates how network-based text analysis can serve as a powerful tool for studying educational materials.

Authentic Research Experiences in a Network Science Course

Amanda Beecher, COMAP: Director of Contests & Outreach (formerly Professor of Mathematics at Ramapo College of New Jersey)

In an undergraduate topics course on network science for mathematics, computer science, and data science majors, students went beyond learning established techniques and used them. The culminating project required each student to independently design a research question, collect or curate real-world data, construct and analyze their own network, and communicate their findings. This project-based approach to teaching network science can empower students to see themselves as contributors to the discipline. The student outcomes were impressive, including a peer-reviewed publication, conference presentations, competitive internships, and further research opportunities. This talk will share the course design, the scaffolding that supported students in moving from learners to researchers, and reflections on what made the experience work, including the challenges. For educators and researchers interested in curricular development for network science, this experience illustrates how embedding authentic inquiry into a course can deepen engagement, build transferable analytical skills, and open doors for students who might not otherwise see themselves as network scientists.

Visible Human MOOC: Visualizing Human Anatomy and Physiology Across 10^10 Scales

Katy Börner & Andreas Bueckle, Department of Intelligent Systems Engineering, Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering Indiana University, USA

The Visible Human MOOC (https://expand.iu.edu/browse/sice/cns/courses/hubmap-visible-human-mooc) is a 20-hour course which introduces the Human Reference Atlas (HRA) effort. The HRA aims to create an open, global reference atlas of the healthy human body at the cellular level. Among others, the course describes the compilation and coverage of experimental data in HuBMAP, SenNet, GTEx and

other NIH-funded projects; demonstrates new single-cell analysis, cell segmentation and annotation techniques; and introduces major features of diverse data portals and the HRA portal. Delivered entirely online, all coursework can be completed asynchronously to fit busy schedules.

Learning Outcomes

• Theoretical and practical understanding of different single-cell tissue analysis techniques.

• Expertise in single-cell data harmonization used to federate data from different individuals analyzed using different technologies in diverse labs.

• Hands-on skills in the design and usage of semantic ontologies that describe human anatomy and physiology, including but not limited to cell types, and biomarkers (e.g., marker genes or proteins).

• Knowledge of the design and usage of a semantically annotated three-dimensional reference system for the healthy human body.

• An understanding of how the HRA might be used to understand human health but also to diagnose and treat disease.

Module Topics Include

• Overview: Project Goals, Setup, and Ambitions

• Tissue Data Acquisition and Analysis

• Biomolecular Data Harmonization

• Ontology, 3D Reference Objects, and User Interfaces

• HRA Portal Design and Usage

References

• Snyder, Michael P., Shin Lin, Amanda Posgai, et al. 2019. "The human body at cellular resolution:

the NIH Human Biomolecular Atlas Program". Nature 574: 187-192. doi: 10.1038/s41586-019-

1629-x.

Börner, Katy, Sarah A Teichmann, Ellen M Quardokus, et al. 2021. "Anatomical structures, cell

types and biomarkers of the Human Reference Atlas". Nature Cell Biology 23: 1117-1128. doi:

10.1038/s41556-021-00788-6.

Jain, Sanjay, Liming Pei, Jeffrey M. Spraggins, et al, HuBMAP Consortium, Katy Börner, and

Michael P. Snyder. 2023. "Advances and prospects for the Human BioMolecular Atlas Program

(HuBMAP)". Nature Cell Biology. doi: 10.1038/s41556-023-01194-w.

Börner, Katy, Philip Blood, Jonathan C. Silverstein, et al. 2025. "Human BioMolecular Atlas

Program (HuBMAP): 3D Human Reference Atlas Construction and Usage". Nature Methods. doi:

10.1038/s41592-024-02563-5

Hierarchical Saturation and Emergent Inhibition in a Learning Hypergraph: A Three-Body Analysis of PISA 2015

Koichi Yasutake,  Hiroshima University, Higashi-Hiroshima, Hiroshima, Japan

Sayaka Tohyama,  Shizuoka University, Hamamatsu, Shizuoka, Japan

Hitoshi Inoue, Nakamura Gakuen University, Fukuoka, Fukuoka, Japan

A three-body hypergraph on 39 science-interest items from PISA 2015 (n=2,189) reveals phenomena invisible to pairwise analysis: hierarchical saturation, emergent inhibition by biosphere interest, and context-dependent motivational duality, extending cognitive-load and self-regulated-learning theory.