Elliot Martin

I'm a second year Masters student in the Complexity Science group at the University of Calgary. I've spent most of my Masters work looking at features of the BTW model of Self-Organized Criticality (SOC), and looking for signs of SOC in different physical systems. I have recently started a new project looking at long range correlations in Earth's atmosphere.

In my spare time I am yet another person who loves yoga. I also enjoy squash, hockey, traveling, and of course reading.

1. What are your main interests? Feel free to include a "pie in the sky" big idea!

Well if I have to choose just a few...

I find the whole concept of self organization, and emergence extremely interesting. The fact that they occur in such a wide range of phenomenon, and on so many different scales is very fascinating. My work involves looking at statistical features of different systems and looking at how they differ and where thy are similar, and then trying to figure out why.

I have also found myself getting more and more interested in evolutionary biology.

2. What sorts of expertise can you bring to the group?

My background is in physics, and as I have said I have spent a lot of time looking at SOC now. I also have some experience with non-linear time series analysis.

3. What do you hope to get out of the CSSS?

I think this is a great chance to meet other people working on complexity issues, and to see what problems they are most interested in. Finding people in this field often seems like half the battle. With the broad range of topics covered you can meet researchers working in pretty much any department. I also hope to learn some new techniques to apply to my own research.

4. Do you have any possible projects in mind for the CSSS?

I have been toying with some ideas about modeling the rate of evolution, which may be an interesting project.