Complex Systems Conference, Boston June 26-July 1

[Tom Johnson]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Monday June 13, 2011

 

World Scientific Leaders to Gather in Boston for Conference on the Complex World Around Us

 

Cambridge, MA --- The Eighth International Conference on Complex Systems, hosted by the New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI), is coming to Boston June 26-July 1. ICCS 2011 is expected to bring together more than 400 researchers from around the world. They will be presenting more than 300 papers on topics ranging from food (Cuisines as Complex Networks) to dealing with destructive cults.

 

CNN Senior Vice President and Chief Innovation Officer David Bohrman, inventor of the Magic Wall and other CNN data visualization techniques, will give the opening conference reception presentation Sunday evening, June 26.

 

“Papers such as those presented at this conference provide a logical approach that helps policymakers predict results in fields ranging from healthcare to Middle East unrest to crowd control,” says Yaneer Bar-Yam, NECSI President. “The approach is a useful and much needed aid to decision-making.”

 

Among the many noteworthy presentations:

 

The Herbert A. Simon Award will be presented to banquet speaker Thomas Schelling, author of “Micromotives and Macrobehavior,” Nobel Laureate and Emeritus Professor of the University of Maryland and Harvard University.

 

"Model Error, Convexity and Skewness" is the topic of New York University Polytechnic Institute Distinguished Professor Nassim Taleb, best known as the author of "The Black Swan."

 

David Gondek of IBM’s Thomas J. Watson’s Research Center and a major force behind the new Jeopardy champion, Watson, will talk on machine intelligence algorithms.

 

Professor Jerome Kagan, Daniel and Amy Starch Research Professor of Psychology, Emeritus, at Harvard University, is one of the world's leading psychologists. He discovered behaviors in infants that predict behaviors later in life.

 

Princeton University Professor John Hopfield, one of the world’s foremost authorities on neural networks, will be presenting "Animal Behavior and Emergent Computational Dynamics," a paper describing how animal brains employ collective neuron behavior to achieve ‘thinking.’

 

Dr. Stephen Wolfram, distinguished scientist, inventor and business leader. Dr. Wolfram founded his own complexity science research organization and is the author of "A New Kind of Science," which advocates for computational systems to explain complexity in nature.

 

Tel Aviv University’s Professor Eshel Ben Jacob will speak about how bacteria collectively solve problems by forming a kind of multicellular brain, and will show movies of the bacteria solving optimization problems that cannot be solved by modern computers.

 

Professor Kunihiko Kaneko of Tokyo University will speak about the principles behind the evolution of multiple levels of biological organization: molecules, cells, organisms, and ecosystems.

 

The Santa Fe Institute's Distinguished Professor and former President Geoffrey West’s presentation, “The Complexity, Simplicity, and Unity of Living Systems from Cells to Cities: Towards a Quantitative, Unifying Framework of Biological and Social Structure, Organization and Dynamics," describes in mathematical terms how cities and other large social structures are merely 'large organisms', and the implications for growth, development, and potential collapse.

 

MIT's Human Dynamics Laboratory's Professor Alex 'Sandy' Pentland, DARPA Internet Grand Challenge winner and serial entrepreneur, will be presenting "How Social Networks Shape Human Behavior."

 

Boston University Professor of Physics, Chemistry and Bioengineering Eugene Stanley is a pioneer in interdisciplinary science and econophysics. His paper, "Economic Fluctuations and Statistical Physics: Quantifying Extremely Rare Events with Applications to the Present World Crisis," explores financial crises as extensions of normal events and not outliers.

 

The New England Complex Systems Institute is based in Cambridge, MA. A pioneer in the field of complex systems science, NECSI addresses questions previously considered to be outside of the realm of scientific inquiry. Its research draws on foundations from mathematics, physics, and computer science to solve pressing problems in such areas as economics, healthcare, education, military conflict, ethnic violence, and international development. Its goal is to expand the boundaries of knowledge and to solve problems of science and society.

 

The conference runs from June 26 to July 1. Details and registration (including press registration) are at www.necsi.edu.

 

 Media contacts:

Clare Froggatt, [hidden email], <a href="tel:[phone]" value="[phone]" target="_blank">617-547-4100    

Steve Ross, [hidden email]

 

 

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