NETWORKS:
This year's conference has a special focus day (Friday) and additional presentations throughout the week on networks. Social, biological, technological networks are all of interest. The structure and dynamics of network formation, as well as the dynamics of network response are all included.

SYSTEMS BIOLOGY:
The development of systems thinking in biology building on advances in high-throughput data acquisition for understanding system interactions and behavior.

MODELING SOCIAL SYSTEMS:
Advances in our understanding of how to build and validate models of social networks and their interactions, and the behavior of social systems with relevance to socio-economic, and psycho-social issues including interactions with the environment, technology, global concerns and other areas of interest.

COMPLEX SYSTEMS ENGINEERING:
Advances in the process of systems engineering for highly complex real-time systems, engineering motivated by biological forms and processes, distributed control and design processes, self-organization and self-monitoring systems, and system robustness characterization and design.

EVOLUTION AND ECOLOGY
Advances in our understanding of the interactions between evolution and the structure and dynamics of ecosystems, internal and external interactions, biodiversity, and the robustness of ecosystems. The role of human actions and interventions, both on global and local properties of ecological importance. The development of ecological and / or evolutionary modeling.

PATTERNS AND PATTERN FORMATION:
The mathematical description of spatial, temporal and spatio-temporal pattern formation and its implications for experiments on patterns in physical, chemical, biological and social systems. Experimental characterization of patterns in all contexts.