The architecture of complexity

Networks with complex topology describe systems as diverse as the cell, the World Wide Web or the society. The emergence of most networks is driven by self-organizing processes that are governed by simple but generic laws. The analysis of the cellular network of various organisms shows that cells and complex man-made networks, such as the Internet or the world wide web, and many social and collaboration networks share the same large-scale topology. I will show that the scale-free topology of these complex webs have important consequences on their robustness against failures and attacks, with implications on drug design, the Internet's ability to survive attacks and failures, and the ability of ideas and innovations to spread on the network.