Paper Unwind @ NetSci26

The 2026 International School and Conference on Network Science (NetSci 2026) was hosted in Boston, MA, from June 1st to 5th, 2026. Marking the 20th anniversary of the conference series, the event was hosted by Northeastern University’s Network Science Institute.

Thanks to the collaboration between NetPlace and the Women in Network Science (WiNS) society, we organized a special social activity to help students and early-career researchers connect and have informal conversations not only among themselves but also with senior members of the community.

To kick things off and make the most of our time together, we organized our beloved Paper Unwind event on Sunday evening, right before the main conference program began. At NetPlace, we love creating welcoming spaces for young scientists.

We gathered on Sunday at 6:00 pm in Room 909, 2nd Floor of Renaissance Park. The hospitality was amazing: we had plenty of drinks and snacks to enjoy while catching up with old friends and making new ones.

Big thanks to Michelle Girvan, Professor and Network Science Society President, who was the special speaker for our Paper Unwind session. In the tradition of these activities, at Paper Unwinds a researcher gives a short talk where you hear the fascinating tale behind some well-known papers in network science, all while enjoying delicious food and great company.

In essence, we asked Michelle to tell us what really happened before her famous 2002 PNAS paper, “Community structure in social and biological networks”, was published. The story behind the story.

Paper Unwinds offer a behind-the-scenes look at how great papers come to life, including the nonlinear twists, turns, setbacks, and breakthroughs that make science exciting, challenging, frustrating, and rewarding all at once.

Network Science students often need help crafting better expectations about how publishing interdisciplinary research actually works, and this event caters directly to that. It was incredibly inspiring to hear the origins of such a foundational paper in community detection and betweenness centrality straight from the author.

Thank you all for joining our activities, and a special thanks to WiNS and Michelle Girvan for making this evening so memorable. See you next year!