Jay Clemens
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has demonstrated a new mathematical framework that works to help researchers discover patterns in complex scientific and engineering systems.
DARPA said Thursday researchers at Stanford University created algorithms designed to explore patterns in data in order to gain insights into network structure and function under the Simplifying Complexity in Scientific Discovery program.
“This approach mathematically represents complex networks more efficiently, revealing deeper functional relationships within networks and how each pattern contributes to the whole,†said Reza Ghanadan, DARPA program manager.
“Additionally, it provides an analytic, systematic, and scalable way to generate hypotheses that are provably relevant to a given network based on key insights that the patterns reveal in that network,” Ghanadan added.
Researchers demonstrated the framework through its application to various complex systems such as air traffic routes that link 50 cities in the U.S. and Canada.
The Stanford team also began to work with a research group from Baylor University to apply the framework to protein networks to uncover patterns about how proteins interact in biological systems.
