The Hungarian scientist and divulger, who has shown, through the study of networks, how our actions are traceable and foreseeable, will be in Torino on June 30th 2011 for the press conference and the Prize awarding ceremony.
The winner of 2011 Lagrange Prize – CRT Foundation is Albert László Barabàsi. The Hungarian physicist ( of Rumanian origins and US citizen ), director of the Center for Complex Network Research at Boston Northeastern University and author of some among the most brilliant essays and most innovative studies in the field of complex systems science, will be awarded  with the prestigious prize Thursday the 30th June at 6:00 pm ,during the prize awarding ceremony that will take place in Torino, at Teatro Vittoria in via Antonio Gramsci, 4.
Born on March 30th 1967 in the small village of Cârţa, along the eastern borders of Transilvania, Barabàsi was an enfant prodige of international research in the 90’s, when, at the age of 32, he was named the Emil T. Hofman Professor of Physics at the University of Notre Dame, in Indiana. In 2007 he moved to the Northeastern University, where he is now Director of the Center for Network Science. He collaborates with the Department of Medicine of the Harvard Medical School and is member of the Center of Cancer Systems Biology at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute.
Renowned for his innovative and transversal approach, in which physics combines freely with other sectors of scientific and humanities research – from molecular biology to computer science, to human behaviour - Barabàsi has repeatedly surprised the academic world  with his studies. Starting from his first research in 1999 on the World Wide Web, which led him to conclude that the Internet was not a “casually linked” network and hence formulating the theory of scale-free network, till to his recent studies on human mobility and the possibility to forecast routes and shifts thanks to traces left by mobile phones  and other technological devices.He has been awarded with numerous prizes, often related to different disciplines : from the FEBS Anniversary Prize for Systems Biology, awarded in 2005 by the Federation of European Biochemical Societies (Barabàsi has discovered that scale-free networks apply also to metabolic and cellular systems), to the NEC Computers and Communication Award of 2008, for the achievements made in computer and IT science. 
Beyond his research activity, Barabàsi is also a science divulger, both via papers published on specialized reviews and books. Two of his essays – both translated into Italian by Einaudi – are considered among the key texts in the analysis of complex networks in modern optics. In Linked. The Network Science(2004), he  has  shared with the general public the most recent theories and the principles of the study of network systems; in his most recent book, Bursts: The Hidden Pattern Behind Everything We Do(2011), he has instead suggested a revolutionary theory according to which – thanks to the entrance of the world into the age of complex networks – not only natural phenomena but also the behaviours of human beings can be traced and predicted: they do not develop regularly but concentrating in true bursts of hyperactivity.
 
 “With his revolutionary research, highlighting the deepest motivations at the basis of common organizational principles and of complex network characteristics” – so quotes the motivation of the Lagrange Prize – CRT Foundation, “Albert László Barabàsi has provided those fundamental concepts necessary to understand the network structures observed in a wide spectrum of models and dominions, ranging from information systems to the microscopic world of molecular biology, so opening new areas for the application of complex systems science”.
The prize awarding ceremony will be inaugurated by the address given by Giovanni Ferrero (CRT Foundation) and Ralph Dum (EU Future Emerging Technologies), and will develop as a conversation betweenBarabàsi and Alessandro Vespignani, ISI Scientific Director – Institute for Scientific Interchange of Torino – and of the Research Center for Complex Networks and Systems of Indiana University, USA. The meeting will be coordinated by Vittorio Bo, founder of the publishing house Codice Edizioni and director of Genoa Science Festival. The remarks by Angelo Miglietta (CRT Foundation) and Mario Rasetti ( ISI Foundation) will close the ceremony.
On the same day, in the morning, at 11:00 am, Albert László Barabàsi will participate in a press conference organized at the main site of CRT Foundation, in via XX Settembre 31,  Torino.
TheLagrange Prize – CRT Foundation, entitled to the scientist and mathematician Joseph-Louis Lagrange, was established in Torino, in 2007, upon an initiative by  Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio of Torino and under the coordination of ISI Foundation – Institute for Scientific Interchange; the prize is the most important International award for the study of complex systems (a sector in which Torino has been playing a leading role for years and at world level). In the past editions, the Prize – consisting in a research grant of fifty-thousand Euros – was awarded to the Russian mathematician Yakov Grigorievich Sinai, the British economist William Brian Arthur (2008), the Italian physicist Giorgio Parisi (2009) and the US bioengineer James J. Collins (2010).
 
BURSTS OF (AND ON) ALBERT LÁSZLÓ BARABÀSI
“In Linked, Barabàsi has shown us how complex networks deploy in the space. In Bursts, he shows us how they deploy in time. Your life can seem you like regulated by chaos : instead, all – from the visit to a place to that to a physician – is predictable and happens in bursts”.
Clay Shirky, expert in technologies and author of Surplus cognitivo. Creatività e generosità nell’era digitale (Codice, 2010).
“I am a scientist, therefore I believe that a great part of natural phenomena can be understood, defined and predicted and – potentially – controlled. Nobody would  have anything to say against such objectives. But, what if we replaced “natural phenomena” with “human beings”? That would mean that human beings can be understood, defined, predicted and – potentially – controlled. Quite an alarming idea, isn’it?”
Albert László Barabàsi
“Barabàsi is one of the few people in the world who has understood the deep structure of empirical reality”.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb, philisopher, essay writer of Il cigno nero. Come l’improbabile governa la nostra vita (Il Saggiatore, 2008).
 
 “Today we are obsessed with Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and we spend our time voraciously devouring thoughts, comments and pictures of our friends. Try to imagine a new generation of social networks that does not play with the past but allows you to peep at our future. Forget the  concept of “what are you thinking about?” and concentrate on the events still to happen. If you believe that Twitter and Facebook create addiction, just imagine what could be generated by the possibility of predicting the future”.
Albert László Barabàsi
“The philosopher Karl Popper rejected all attempts to show a priori which direction history could take. Today Barabàsi launches a new challenge: human behaviours are not in principle unforeseeable, we can catch a glimpse of the universal amid an intricate plot of human lives”.
Marco Motta, journalist, Le Scienze.
 
 
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