We are faced with a flood of molecular data. Various biomolecules interact in a cell to perform biological function, forming very large networks. The challenge is how to mine these molecular networks to answer fundamental questions, including gaining new insight into ageing, diseases and improving therapeutics.

Just as computational approaches for analysing genetic sequence data have revolutionised biological understanding, the expectation is that analyses of biological networks will have similar groundbreaking impacts. However, dealing with network data is nontrivial, since many methods for analysing large networks fall into the category of computationally intractable problems.

We develop methods for extracting new biological knowledge from the wiring patterns of large molecular network data, linking network wiring with biological function and translating the information hidden in the wiring patterns into everyday language. We apply our methods to other domains, including tracking the dynamics of the world trade network and finding new insights into the origins of wealth and economic crises.

Main lecture