Hypergraphs and simplicial complexes in focus: a roadmap for future research in higher-order interactions

Abstract Higher-order interactions are increasingly being recognized as fundamental to our understanding of complex systems, networks, and the development of the next generation of AI algorithms. However, modeling higher-order interactions requires us to go beyond graphs and networks, which can only encode pairwise interactions, and so demands a new theory. Hypergraphs and simplicial complexes (also called higher-order networks), which arise as natural mathematical representations of higher-order complex systems, are therefore attracting increasing attention. The mathematics of higher-order networks is already providing important insights, yet many fundamental mathematical questions remain unsolved; for instance, in spectral graph theory, discrete topology, and higher-order network dynamics. This roadmap summarizes the scientific discussions that took place on these topics between pure mathematicians, theoretical physicists, computer and network scientists at the Newton Institute Satellite meeting on ‘Hypergraphs: Theory and Applications’. We survey the current state-of-the-art in higher-order network research, and propose some trajectories for future research, including in areas such as extremal and spectral hypergraph theory, discrete topology, higher-order dynamics, higher-order machine learning, and applications in the brain and social sciences.