Sayan Bhattacharyya

Email: My email address is: bhattach (at) umich (dot) edu

1. What are my main interests?

I've a background (and graduate degrees) in both computer science and the humanities. In my ongoing PhD dissertation work (in Comparative Literature), I am, among other things, looking at the tradition in continental philosophy and political theory that originates with Spinoza -- I find much in that tradition of looking at the world that reminds me (in an abstract way) of the complex systems approach.

In a less abstract way: I'm very intrigued by the idea of complex systems approaches to language and linguistics, although I've only barely begun to explore this. It does not relate directly to my dissertation research, but it is be something I would like to explore in the future. Specifically, I am thinking of a paper by Ricard Sole and Ferrer i Cancho on lexical networks that I read recently.

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

I've programming/ modeling experience with agent-based systems in Repast, Ascape and Swarm. I've taken a couple of graduate classes in Complex Systems: one in modeling and one in theory. I've fairly good programming skills, and a fairly wide (and interdisciplinary) range of interests.

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

(1) To get a sense of where in the Complex Systems field exciting things are happening; (2) To get a better sense of the kind of people who are drawn to this field, and why they are drawn to this field; (3) To pick up useful, practical skills (such as programming in Netlogo, etc.)

4. Do I have any possible projects in mind for the CSSS? (Recall that we will all be working in groups on at least one project with the goal of presenting your progress on the last day and finishing up a paper by sumer's end.)

I'm interested in the idea of lexical networks (please see (1) above) and that's definitely something I'm keeping in mind as a possible project idea. More broadly, projects related to language, society and/or cognition are things I find appealing. But in general I am quite open to suggestions.