Collaborative Research: SHF: Medium: NetSplicer: Scalable Decoupling-based Algorithms for Multilayer Network Analysis

A multilayer network is a powerful and expressive mathematical tool for modeling and analyzing social, economic, biological, and technological systems. Informally, a multilayer network is a collection of related graphs. Applications of multilayer networks include understanding social networks, economic systems, online marketplaces, and detecting vulnerabilities in cyber-physical systems. While this research area is rapidly growing, there is a dearth of computational tools for analyzing large-scale networks from diverse applications. This project will develop the theoretical foundations and software infrastructure for analyzing very large multilayer networks on modern computing systems, thereby enabling their widespread use in diverse applications.

This project will develop NetSplicer, a collection of scalable high-performance algorithms for multilayer-network analysis. The approaches in NetSplicer will be based on a divide-and-conquer-like technique called network decoupling. Using decoupling, the multilayer network can be subdivided into multiple components, each of which could be potentially analyzed using known graph algorithms. Network decoupling seeks to address issues that are critical for multilayer analysis, such as reducing information loss and preserving structural and semantic information. The challenges in efficiently applying network decoupling include determining optimal decoupling strategies, preserving the structure and content of multilayer networks that have multiple vertex and edge types, and developing architecture-aware scalable algorithms that apply across different layers of a network. This project will provide a new capability for multiple research communities and will build a repository for multilayer networks. The planned collaborations with domain scientists from academia and industry, as well as curriculum development and outreach activities, will shape project development efforts to maximize impact.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.