Albert-László Barabási is a physicist, best known for his work in the research of network science. A Hungarian born native of Transylvania, he received his Masters in Theoretical Physics at the Eotvos University in Budapest, Hungary and was awarded a Ph.D. three years later at Boston University. Barabási is the author of six books, including the forthcoming book "The Formula: The Science of Success." His work lead to the discovery of scale-free networks in 1999, and proposed the Barabási-Albert model to explain their widespread emergence in natural, technological and social systems, from the cellular telephone to the WWW or online communities.

Barabási is both the Robert Gray Dodge Professor of Network Science and a Distinguished University Professor at Northeastern University, where he directs the Center for Complex Network Research, and holds appointments in the Departments of Physics and Computer Science, as well as in the Department of Medicine, Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women Hospital, and is a member of the Center for Cancer Systems Biology at Dana Farber Cancer Institute.

Barabási is a Fellow of the American Physical Society. In 2005 he was awarded the FEBS Anniversary Prize for Systems Biology and in 2006 the John von Neumann Medal by the John von Neumann Computer Society from Hungary, for outstanding achievements in computer-related science and technology. In 2004 he was elected into the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and in 2007 into the Academia Europaea. He received the C&C Prize from the NEC C&C Foundation in 2008. In 2009 APS chose him Outstanding Referee and the US National Academies of Sciences awarded him the 2009 Cozzarelli Prize. In 2011 Barabsi was awarded the Lagrange Prize-CRT Foundation for his contributions to complex systems, awarded Doctor Honoris Causa from Universidad Politcnica de Madrid, became an elected Fellow in AAAS (Physics) and is an 2013 Fellow of the Massachusetts Academy of Sciences