On October 12th, we had the great pleasure to host Albert-László Barabási at CeMM. After several rounds of meetings with PhD students and faculty, as well as a stimulating discussion with invited artists in the brain lounge, Albert-László Barabási delivered the 5th SMART lecture. His talk on “Network Science: From the WWW to Human Diseases” attracted an exceptional audience of some 150 people. 

After a general introduction and welcome note by the Scientific Director Giulio Superti-Furga, the head of bioinformatics at CeMM, Jörg Menche, introduced the speaker in more detail, as he has worked as a postoc in his lab for over four years. In addition to the key role of Albert-László Barabási in the development of the field of network science, Jörg also emphasized the astounding breadth of his research that includes topics from Material Science to Systems Biology, to name only two of the many fields to which Albert-László Barabási could make seminal contributions. 

In his talk, Albert-László Barabási recapitulated how networks can be used as a unifying framework to describe a wide range of seemingly unrelated systems: Computers that are connected via the internet, actors that played in the same movie, the interactions between proteins, or cities that are connected by flight routes, Albert-László Barabási showed there are universal structural features that are common among all these different networks. He argued that understanding these features is also essential for uncovering the molecular basis of human diseases. 

We thank Albert-László Barabási for his inspiring talk and the ensuing lively discussion that gave a vivid example of how cutting edge science can be communicated to a wide audience.

The SMART lecture series (science - medicine - art - research - technology) will be continued in 2016.