UNDERSTANDING AND MANAGING COMPLEX SYSTEMS

The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) together with the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) will organise a symposium concerning fundamentals and applications of complexity science.

How can we manage the financial crisis? How do infection diseases spread or do languages develop? What can we learn from social networks? Surprisingly evolutionary dynamics of cancer and the emergence of human culture can be described with similar mathematical theories. On the other hand, can phenomena such as human behaviour and societal systems be approached the same as phenomena like biological systems and complex man-made systems? What are essential messages and methods developed from complexity science? Internationally recognized experts in the field of complexity research will introduce several topics and current state of the art.

Key-note speakers are among others Martin Nowak, Harvard University (evolutionary dynamics), Dan Braha, University of Massachusetts (innovation, organisation and complexity) and Kees Stam, Free University Amsterdam (brain networks). Participants of the NWO theme Complexity are invited to give a short presentation of their work, which will also be presented as posters. The meeting ends with a plenary discussion. In the evening Marten Scheffer, Wageningen University (ecology),  gives a performance (separate registration) of Concerted Science.

Please save this date in advance. In January 2012 you will receive the final version of the program of  this symposium.