Job Info
Employer:
Universtiy of Notre Dame
Position Type:
Education
Research
Job skills:
Complex problem solving
Synthesizing information
Mathematical skills
Lab or instrumentation skills
Knowledge of physics principles
Data analysis
Team work
Albert-Laszlo Barabasi's Job:
Barabasi studies networks, all kinds of networks, from biological systems to the internet, and everything in between. He has found that, no matter the type of network, they have similar characteristics, such as the number of hubs and nodes, to the time it takes from information to travel in between the nodes. He is hoping that his research will benefit those in biology, by learning how cells and genes interact with one another. This knowledge could help fight diseases and make more efficient medicine.
Career Facts
Employer Type:
School/Academia
Current Location:
South Bend, IN
Physics Degree:
Doctorate
Educational Information
Ph.D. from Boston University
More about Albert-Laszlo Barabasi
Albert-Laszlo Barabasi's home page:
http://www.nd.edu/~alb/
Direct link to Albert-Laszlo Barabasi's profile:
http://www.physicscentral.com/explore/people/barabasi.cfm
Biography:
Albert-Laszlo Barabasi was born and raised in Transylvania, and wanted to become a sculptor. He found in school that, as much as he appreciated the arts he perhaps had a greater talent for Physics, after he kept wining Physics competitions in the schools.
He became interested in networks when pursuing his postdoctoral studies at IBM. He was walking in New York City, when he thought about the massive networks of electrical, telephone, gas, and water lines underneath the streets. The idea of finding out more about these networks intrigued him. As he thought about these utility networks, it struck him that there must be enormous complexity to these networks. "There's no way this could be completely random, " he thought. There had to be more to it, and this observation led him to become more interested in studying networks in more detail.
Some of Barabasi's recent work involves biological networks. One of Barabasi's recent projects on biological networks involved studying how networks can help us understand diseases related to genes; another project focused on how metabolic networks and their properties can help us learn how to design drugs rather than find them through a trial and error process.
