Gustavo Nicolas Paez Salamanca
From Santa Fe Institute Events Wiki
What are your main interests?
Since I was a kid, nature has been my main interest. I love to study interactions among living things, and how they organize and develop structures that help them to thrive in this world. Both humans and non-human systems are great, and this is why my two main academic interests are both eco-logy and eco-nomy (quite similar, indeed).
Talking about more technical matters, I love to model things. I believe that it is part of the human nature to try to develop simplified versions of reality to understand it and act over it, and well, I don't deny my nature. I have special affection toward stochastic and time discrete models, but I enjoy learning about any type of models.
At last, but not least, my nonacademic interests. Once again, I adore nature. This is why I love hiking and doing scuba diving. I enjoy a lot dancing (latin music) and amusement parks. Just to end up, recently I have become quite more interested in dinosaurs and paleobotanics, so any one that have interesting stories about them, I’m willing to hear them.
What sort of expertise can you bring to the group?
I'm still an undergraduate student so, related to deep knowledge in a certain area... I think it is quite a few the expertise I can bring. The topic that I manage the best is generalized linear regression models, if it became useful, I'll be more than glad helping. I had participate in many conferences and events, the greatest is the COP15 (Climate Change Conference at Copenhagen, 2009) so, I know a little bit about "public science" (i.e how to say scientific things to common people).
Given that I can't help quite much in technical matters, there are three things which I consider that I can be useful: 1. Even though I don’t know a lot of a particular topic, I know about many different areas and I enjoy doing links among them, so I can help looking from ideas of different knowledge areas to apply in a particular project. 2. I had study various things related to combinatory, algebraic inequalities and geometry (mostly Euclidean), so even though these things do not solve the hard problems, they help with the small details that appear during the research processes. 3. After I graduate from school I have work a lot on environmental problems, sustainable development, and environmental justice, so anything related with that, I hope that I have something to say.
What do you hope to get out of the CSSS?
A lot of knowledge, a lot of good stories, and a lot of friends.
Do you have any possible projects in mind for the CSSS?
Actually I'm beginning to work in three research projects at the same time. As I'm beginning my knowledge over them is quite restricted to literature and a little bit further, so any one that wants to help me a little bit in any of them during the school is more than welcome:
From economy: Proving that fellow-feeling is quite stronger (and have more likelihood) than egoism when you try to justify social coordination systems.
From ecology: How do invasive species succeed, how to predict them, and how to stop them (focusing in tropical diseases that are "climbing" the Andes mountain chain).
From ... I’m not sure: Biotic Pumps: How do ecosystems generate their own climates? Until which degree we can consider the weather an abiotic condition, or it can be a consequence of the things that dwell in the area.
Once again, any help is certainly welcome.