zero forcing (also called graph infection) on a simple, undirected graph $g$ is based on the color-change rule: if each vertex of $g$ is colored either white or blue, and vertex $v$ is a blue vertex with only one white neighbor $w$, then change the color of $w$ to blue. a minimum zero forcing set is a set of blue vertices of minimum cardinality that can color the entire graph blue using the color change rule. in this talk will discuss the role of zero forcing in systems control, electrical engineer, and linear algebra. even though various scientist have been using zero forcing, it wasn't until recently that it was realized they were all doing the same type of propagation. zero forcing gets its name from the linear algebraists, who were using the propagation to force entries of a vector to be zero. sponsored by fan chung graham and jacques verstraete