Match them all! poster game & best poster award at NetSci 2025
We are excited to announce a social activity at NetSci 2025: a graph matching game!
The game is meant to be a fun and engaging way to encourage networking and collaboration among attendees. Each participant will have a small graph on their badge. Each poster board will have a small graph pinned next to it. The goal of the game is to find matches with the poster boards and other participants.
Rules of the game
- Each participant receives a graph and its ID on it.
- Each poster board has a small graph pinned next to it, with its ID (The one above the graph –the one starting with P indicates the board number)
- The goal of the game is to find matches (isomorphic graphs) with the poster boards and other participants.
- Participants have first to register to the game through the REG form.
- Every time participants find a match, they can log it using the short PLAY form.
- Winners are the ones collecting more matches. If there are multiple winners, we will pick the fastest one.
Vote your preferred poster
Every day of the conference you can vote for up to 3 posters (using their graph ID as key), using this VOTE form. At the end of the last poster session, a committee will evaluate the most voted posters to assign the Best Poster Award.
In short:
What is an isomorphism?
In a nutshell, two graphs are isomorphic if they share the same topological structure. This means they have the same number of nodes and edges, and the connections between nodes are identical — only the node labels differ. In other words, you can rename the nodes of one graph to make it exactly match the other.
For example, the following graphs A and B are isomorphic:
Graph A
A B | | C -- D
Graph B
1 -- 2 | | 3 4
Node mapping
\( A \rightarrow 3 \)
\( B \rightarrow 4 \)
\( C \rightarrow 1 \)
\( D \rightarrow 2 \)
Another example with asymmetric graphs
Graph C
A -- B | C -- D | | E F
Graph D
1 -- 2
|
3 -- 4
| |
5 6
Node mapping
\( A \rightarrow 2 \)
\( B \rightarrow 1 \)
\( C \rightarrow 4 \)
\( D \rightarrow 3 \)
\( E \rightarrow 6 \)
\( F \rightarrow 5 \)
What do the graphs on the badge and poster board look like?
An example graph on your badge
All the graphs you would match with
The prizes
Oh, you reached the end of the post? You really wish for a prize, don’t you?
Well, the glory of winning is the best prize of all!
What? You want something more tangible? Alright, we will have some prizes for the winners.
Stay tuned for more details!