Complex Systems Summer School 2012-CSSS Success Stories
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| Complex Systems Summer School 2012 |
CSSS Success Stories
2003 CSSS alum Nathan Eagle is founder and CEO of the company txteagle, which seeks to enable the two billion mobile phone subscribers living in the developing world to earn income using their phones. An Omidyar fellow at SFI from 2007 to 2010, Nathan is visiting professor in media arts and sciences at MIT. His research focuses on developing computational tool and statistical analysis techniques to garner useful information from the petabytes of data generated worldwide every day about human movements, financial transactions, and communication patterns. In 2009 Nathan was named by MIT's Technology Review magazine as one of the world's top innovators under 35 for his pioneering work to use "big data" analysis to improve the lives of the world's people.
After completing a postdoctoral fellowship from the National Science Foundation, 1998 CSSS participant Lanren Ancel Meyers joined the faculty of Integrative Biology at the University of Texas at Austin in 2003. Using a combination of mathematical modeling and experiments, Lauren's research lies at the interface of evolutionary biology and epidemiology. She studies the interplay between disease transmission dynamics and the evolution of pathogens including those responsible for epidemic meningitis, influenza, walking pneumonia, and SARS. In collaboration with public health officials in the US and Canada, Lauren has developed powerful mathematical methods for forecasting the spread of respiratory diseases and designing effective disease control strategies for hospitals and metropolitan areas.
Eric Bonabeau (CSSS 1992) is Chairman and Chief Scientific Officer at Icosystem Corporation, a Cambridge, MA-based "idea incubator" that uses complexity science to discover business opportunities and invent the technology to support them. Eric is Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Advances in Complex Systems and serves as a member of the editorial board of the journal Artificial Life. Eric is editor and co-author of the book Intelligence Collective and the co-author of Swarm Intelligence) and Self-Organization in Biological Systems. Eric's commercial experience includes research and development in US and European telecommunications and software companies as well as establishing Eurobios, a joint venture with Cap Gemini Ernst & YDung to apply the sciences of complexity to business issues.
Nigel Snoad (CSSS 1997) develops information-sharing technology at Microsoft for use in large scale disasters. Formerly he was with Microsoft Humanitarian Systems working in Afghanistan and elsewhere on new crisis collaboration concepts. Nigel is an advisor to the ICT4Peace foundation, the Institute for State Effectiveness and part of the advisory board for Kopernik, a technology NGO startup. Before joining Microsoft Nigel was with the United Nations, most recently as a global Pandemic contingency planner for the UN System and before that with the UN joint Logistics Center where he was deployed to Iraq, the 2004 Tsunami in Indonesia, the Sudan and elsewhere. At UNjLC Nigel managed the mapping and information management teams and led logistics coordination in the field for major emergencies. He currently is enlisting collaborators of many disciplines from places like SFI to help rethink how the humanitarian aid community approaches crises.
John Miller (CSSS 1988) became Assistant Professor in the Department of Social and Decision Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University in 1990, Associate Professor in 1995, and Professor in 2000. He has been a member of the External Faculty of the Santa Fe Institute since 1989, and in 2003 he was appointed a Professor at the Institute. He currently splits his time between Carnegie Mellon University and SF!. From 1998 to 2001 he was the head of the undergraduate Information Systems Program at CMU, in 2002 he became the head of the Department of Social and Decision Sciences. In 1982 he was awarded the Val B. Fischer Award in Social Sciences from the University of Colorado and in 1995 he received the Elliot Dunlap Smith Award for Distinguished Teaching from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University. Miller is co-director (With Scott E. Page) of SFl's Graduate Workshop in Computational Social Science.
Why Support Your Student(s) Participation in the Santa Fe Institute’s Complex Systems Summer School?
The Santa Fe Institute is an acknowledged leader in transdisciplinary scientific research and the founding institution of complexity science. SFI’s Complex Systems Summer School (CSSS)—now in its 26th year—is the premier program in training graduate and postdoctoral fellows in the fundamentals and practice of complex systems scholarship.
CSSS offers an intensive four-week introduction to complex behavior in mathematical, physical, living, and social systems for students in the sciences and social sciences. It is designed for those who seek hands-on experience in transdisciplinary research of complex adaptive systems.
Lectures, laboratories, and discussion sessions focus on foundational ideas, tools, and current topics in complex systems research, including nonlinear dynamics and pattern formation, scaling theory, information theory and computation theory, adaptation and evolution, network structure and dynamics, adaptive computation techniques, computer modeling tools, and the specific application of these core topics to various disciplines. In addition, participants formulate and carry out team projects related to topics covered in the program. Instructors are drawn from resident and external scientists from around the world who are affiliated with SFI, some of the top minds in complexity science.
Participants come away with a working tool kit of complex systems methods; familiarity with foundational literature; insight into fundamental research themes within the field; and an introduction to annually selected topics at the cutting edge of complex systems. They experience the challenges and rewards of collaborative research in project-based working groups, gain teaching experience during peer presentations, and have the opportunity to interact directly with the scholarly community at the Institute.
Ongoing scholarly collaboration with CSSS peers often result in refereed publication. Beyond these peer relationships, summer school alumni automatically join a cohort of elite complexity scholars who number fewer than 2,000 scientists throughout the world. CSSS alumni have an opportunity to continue to actively engage in SFI activities as workshop participants, as visiting fellows, and as faculty in the Institute’s educational programs.
The majority of CSSS graduates are still in academe; many are tenured faculty holding leadership positions within their institutions. Nearly two dozen CSSS graduates have gone on to become postdoctoral fellows at SFI.
“Attending the CSSS 2001 had a profound influence on my research and educational career, writes Marcio Pie (now Zoology, Federal University Parana, Brazil). First, I was able to assess my strengths and weaknesses in my educational background. Secondly, some ideas I had during the summer school, together with our final project, were the basis of several research projects I am carrying out right now, both continuing a collaboration with another CSSS alumnus, and also incorporating another collaborator. We expect to publish 2-3 papers from this project. Finally, the experience of working together and discussing various issues with people from many different areas was enlightening and stimulating.”