PLANET-NL at IAS Festival 2026

We had a wonderful time at our Future Challenges Session as part of the IAS Festival last week! The Network Science for the Society of the Future keynote speaker, Dr. Rafael Prieto-Curiel (Complexity Science Hub), shared his cutting-edge work on crime networks. His work bridged the gap between a complex problem and policy solutions in the case of cartels.

Following his presentation, Laure Michon (Research & Statistics, City of Amsterdam) spoke about the importance of aligning research agendas between both academia and policymakers by making findings easily digestible and actionable. Tom Emery (ODDISEI) emphasized how building a streamlined digital research infrastructure pipeline can help to ensure research results can keep up with the short timeframe policymakers operate within.

We then had an open panel discussion with the speakers and the audience, going through the contemporary challenges in network science such as linking data, inferring causality, and bridging the gaps between research and policymaking. Thanks to all our guests for their insights on how network science can evolve to meet the challenges of the next decade.