There has been an explosion of interest in mathematical models of large networks, leading to numerous research papers and books. The National Research Council carried out a study evaluating the emergence of a new area called "network science," which could provide the mathematics and experimental methods for characterizing, predicting, and designing networks. David Alderson has become a leading advocate for formulating the foundations of network science so that its predictions can be applied to real networks.

In 1965 Leonard Ornstein wrote a long and thoughtful essay on information and meaning. Shannon's idea that communication systems could transmit and process information without regard to its meaning just did not seem right to him. He was particularly interested in how scientists use and interpret information as part of science. Forty-eight years later, he is sharing how he sees science, discovery, information, and meaning with Ubiquity Magazine.

Protecting computing systems and networks from attackers and data theft is an enormously complicated problem. The individual operating systems are complex (typically more than 40 million lines of code), they are connected to an enormous Internet (on order of 1 billion hosts), and the whole network is heavily populated (more than 2.3 billion users). Hunting down and patching vulnerabilities is a losing game.

Computer science is often divided into two camps, systems and theory, but of course the reality is more complicated and more interesting than that. One example is the area of "experimental algorithmics," also termed "empirical algorithmics." This fascinating discipline marries algorithm analysis, which is often done with mathematical proofs, with experimentation with real programs running on real machines.

This is Part I of an interview with Professor Erol Gelenbe, conducted by Professor Cristian Calude. Gelenbe holds the Dennis Gabor Chair Professorship in the Electrical and Electronic Engineering Department at Imperial College London and is an associate editor for this publication. This interview also appeared in the October 2010 issue of the Bulletin of the European Association for Computer Science and is printed here with permission.
--Editor