How a Northeastern student spearheaded a new exhibit on network science at the Museum of Science in Boston

A few years ago, Adina Gitomer, a doctoral student in network science at Northeastern University, visited the Museum of Science in Boston with friends.

While exploring the math section, they came across a small exhibit on networks. Gitomer was surprised to see only a small plaque dedicated to network science.

She pointed this out to a friend, whose response was, “We should bring networks to the museum.”

“I took that and ran with it,” Gitomer says.

She reached out to the museum and offered her help.

Today, visitors to the Museum of Science can hear Gitomer’s voice narrating a video presentation that plays on a massive semi-circular screen over 20 feet in diameter. The video explains the basics of network science and how networks inform spreading processes — whether it’s ideas, infections or internet memes.

This year, the installation is part of the museum’s spotlight of the theme “Being Human.”

Real-world example to visualize networks

To illustrate network science at the basic level, Gitomer says, she wanted to show how something spreads through a network in an approachable way. She took real-world data from Twitch, a gaming platform, about its network of users in Portugal and modeled two scenarios of how a piece of information — a gaming hack, for example — can spread through the network.

“I basically went in and found which node [or user] we should start from if we want the propagation to take as long as possible to completely infect the whole network versus [which node we should start from] for that to happen as quickly as possible,” Gitomer says.

To translate these models into visual form, she collaborated with Pedro Cruz, an associate professor in the Art + Design department at Northeastern. Cruz, whose work has been showcased in venues such as the London Design Biennale and MoMA as well as magazines such as Fast Company, WIRED and National Geographic, specializes in visualizing complex data.

“I had a lot of fun and a lot of freedom to be creative about how one can portray abstract networks in an elevated way,” he says. “I try to make use of metaphors in order to add more layers of communication to the data.”

Meg Rosenburg, a senior exhibit content developer at the Museum of Science, collaborated with Gitomer and Cruz to create a captivating, easy-to-understand video designed to catch the attention of passing visitors.

To enhance the visual appeal and illustrate abstract concepts, the video incorporates network art by Brennan Klein, an assistant teaching professor at Northeastern’s Network Science Institute and director of the master’s degree in complex network analysis program.

“Some of the examples and applications [of network science] can be really hard to get at with a literal video reference,” Rosenburg says. “Brennan’s art really helped bridge that gap.”

Klein’s piece, “The Friends,” for example, depicting silhouettes of people sitting in a circle with a ring-shaped network running underneath them and smaller networks connecting different points on their bodies, helps tell the story of humans being connected in a network and being made up of networks.

“It’s evoking the community aspect and the communication aspect that sometimes in a literal video is a little harder to get at,” Rosenburg says.

Klein, who began creating network-inspired art as a doctoral student at the Network Science Institute a decade ago, integrates nodes and links into his work, sometimes for visual aesthetics and other times as direct representations of data.

“A lot of my work is about networks of people, ideas, nature and so on, but also part of the art is intended to teach the viewer or offer a perspective on networks that they might not otherwise encounter,” he says.

Building a lasting partnership in science communication

For Gitomer, this project has been one of the most exciting parts of her Ph.D. experience.

“It got me really excited about science communication,” says Gitomer, who is set to graduate from Northeastern this spring.

She’s enjoyed the opportunity of translating complex network science concepts for a general audience, especially the young visitors who make up the majority of the museum’s guests.

“It’s great to have people who are doing technical work, who are immersed in their science, also be interested in communicating it out to the public,” Rosenburg says. “It’s really inspiring to find partners, where we can both complement each other in really exciting ways.”

The exhibit, she says, just scratches the surface of what the museum visitors could stand to learn about network science and networks, which are relevant to everyone’s lives.

“We really do see this as part of an ongoing partnership,” says Rosenburg. “We might be able to continue to find shared values in the things that we’re both trying to do as organizations and communicate out to the world.”