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| Abbreviation | CSH |
|---|---|
| Formation | 2016 |
| Type | Research Institute |
| Purpose | Complexity Science |
| Headquarters | Palais Springer-Rothschild, Vienna |
| Membership | 11 institutions |
| Leader | Stefan Thurner (President), Sabine Seidler (Vice President) |
| Staff | approx. 80 |
| Website | csh.ac.at |
The Complexity Science Hub (CSH) is an independent research institute based in Vienna. It focuses on the study of complex systems, aiming to contribute scientific insights to address the major challenges of our time.
The Complexity Science Hub (CSH) focuses on the study of complex systems—systems composed of many dynamically interconnected components where the behavior of the whole cannot be easily inferred from the behavior of individual elements. Examples include social networks, supply chains, financial markets, and ecosystems. The aim is to understand the dynamics of such systems to gain insights into the mechanisms behind global challenges, including economic shifts, supply shortages, the climate crisis, pandemics, artificial intelligence, cybercrime, and social crises. A key focus is the assessment of systemic risks in an increasingly globalized world, where vast networks interconnect societies.
A profound scientific understanding of complex systems requires massive datasets. To extract meaningful information from these datasets for decision-making support, CSH researchers develop new paradigms, approaches, methods, and tools using advanced techniques, such as machine learning and artificial intelligence.
The CSH combines methods from mathematics, computer modeling, data science, and network analysis with research questions from various fields, including medicine, economics, ecology, and social sciences. Its research provides the foundation for evidence-based decision-making. By examining interactions within and between complex systems and how they respond to change, the CSH aims to develop realistic interventions to positively influence these systems for the benefit of society. [1]
Research areas [2] are:
Three Core Objectives: [3]
Since its inception, CSH has hosted PhD/Doctoral students who conduct their thesis research at CSH, likewise postdoctoral fellows who conduct research in collaboration with members of the CSH faculty.
In 2024, CSH – with the support of Austrian federal ministries – established the Digital Innovation School, an umbrella structure for research training at the doctoral and postdoctoral levels. The DIS Graduate Program in Complexity Science operates with nine university partners and one federal research institution. Unique features of the DIS PhD program include an annual series of master classes and two research experiences outside of academia. The DIS PostDoc Program focuses on enhancing researchers’ skills in complex systems research, with a specific emphasis on supporting advancement of research through e.g. FAIR data principles.
In CSH offers the following programs for early-stage researchers:
CSH Goes School is aimed at teachers, parents, and school-age children. It offers themed worksheets that use interactive data visualizations and dashboards to introduce students playfully to the world of science, demonstrate its application to everyday topics, and spark their curiosity. Additionally, CSH Goes School organizes interactive workshops for school groups from the region and participates in the Long Night of Research and other local science communication events.
The Complexity Science Hub was founded in 2015 by TU Wien, Graz University of Technology, the Medical University of Vienna, and the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology. [4] Official operations began in 2016. That same year, Vienna University of Economics and Business joined the CSH. [5] In 2018, the University for Continuing Education Krems followed, [6] in 2019 the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna [7] and the Austrian Federal Economic Chamber, in 2020 Central European University, [8] in 2023 the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna (BOKU), [9] and in 2024 the IT:U Interdisciplinary Transformation University Austria joined. [10] [11] The CSH currently has eleven member institutions [12] across the fields of economics, medicine, technology, life sciences, digitalization, and more.
The CSH is also embedded in an international network of complexity research centers, including the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico, Arizona State University, the Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Físicas (CBPF) in Rio de Janeiro, Sapienza University of Rome, and the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Amsterdam.
Complexity scientist Stefan Thurner has been the first president and scientific director of the CSH since its foundation. [13] [14] The international science advisory board is chaired by the Austrian sociologist Helga Nowotny. [15] [16]
From 2016 to 2024, the CSH was based in Palais Strozzi. In the winter of 2024, the institute relocated to Palais Springer-Rothschild in Vienna’s Landstraße district. [17]
A complex system is a system composed of many components which may interact with each other. Examples of complex systems are Earth's global climate, organisms, the human brain, infrastructure such as power grid, transportation or communication systems, complex software and electronic systems, social and economic organizations, an ecosystem, a living cell, and, ultimately, for some authors, the entire universe.
An academic discipline or field of study is a branch of knowledge, taught and researched as part of higher education. A scholar's discipline is commonly defined by the university faculties and learned societies to which they belong and the academic journals in which they publish research.
Social network analysis (SNA) is the process of investigating social structures through the use of networks and graph theory. It characterizes networked structures in terms of nodes and the ties, edges, or links that connect them. Examples of social structures commonly visualized through social network analysis include social media networks, meme proliferation, information circulation, friendship and acquaintance networks, business networks, knowledge networks, difficult working relationships, collaboration graphs, kinship, disease transmission, and sexual relationships. These networks are often visualized through sociograms in which nodes are represented as points and ties are represented as lines. These visualizations provide a means of qualitatively assessing networks by varying the visual representation of their nodes and edges to reflect attributes of interest.
The Santa Fe Institute (SFI) is an independent, nonprofit theoretical research institute located in Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States and dedicated to the multidisciplinary study of the fundamental principles of complex adaptive systems, including physical, computational, biological, and social systems. The institute is ranked 24th among the world's "Top Science and Technology Think Tanks" and 24th among the world's "Best Transdisciplinary Research Think Tanks" according to the 2020 edition of the Global Go To Think Tank Index Reports, published annually by the University of Pennsylvania.
In mathematics, computer science and network science, network theory is a part of graph theory. It defines networks as graphs where the vertices or edges possess attributes. Network theory analyses these networks over the symmetric relations or asymmetric relations between their (discrete) components.
In sociology, social complexity is a conceptual framework used in the analysis of society. In the sciences, contemporary definitions of complexity are found in systems theory, wherein the phenomenon being studied has many parts and many possible arrangements of the parts; simultaneously, what is complex and what is simple are relative and change in time.
Computational sociology is a branch of sociology that uses computationally intensive methods to analyze and model social phenomena. Using computer simulations, artificial intelligence, complex statistical methods, and analytic approaches like social network analysis, computational sociology develops and tests theories of complex social processes through bottom-up modeling of social interactions.
Computational science, also known as scientific computing, technical computing or scientific computation (SC), is a division of science, and more specifically the Computer Sciences, which uses advanced computing capabilities to understand and solve complex physical problems. While this discussion typically extenuates into Visual Computation, this research field of study will typically include the following research categorizations.
Computational economics is an interdisciplinary research discipline that combines methods in computational science and economics to solve complex economic problems. This subject encompasses computational modeling of economic systems. Some of these areas are unique, while others established areas of economics by allowing robust data analytics and solutions of problems that would be arduous to research without computers and associated numerical methods.
Douglas R. White was an American complexity researcher, social anthropologist, sociologist, and social network researcher at the University of California, Irvine.
Helga Nowotny is Professor emeritus of Social Studies of Science, ETH Zurich. She has held numerous leadership roles on Academic boards and public policy councils, and she has authored many publications in the social studies of science and technology.
Modul University Vienna is a private university established in 2007 in Vienna, Austria, that focuses on social and economic development. In particular, it focuses on the areas of tourism, new media information technology, sustainability, business management, and public governance.
Dirk Helbing is Professor of Computational Social Science at the Department of Humanities, Social and Political Sciences and affiliate of the Computer Science Department at ETH Zurich.
A social-ecological system consists of 'a bio-geo-physical' unit and its associated social actors and institutions. Social-ecological systems are complex and adaptive and delimited by spatial or functional boundaries surrounding particular ecosystems and their context problems.
Artificial life is a field of study wherein researchers examine systems related to natural life, its processes, and its evolution, through the use of simulations with computer models, robotics, and biochemistry. The discipline was named by Christopher Langton, an American computer scientist, in 1986. In 1987, Langton organized the first conference on the field, in Los Alamos, New Mexico. There are three main kinds of alife, named for their approaches: soft, from software; hard, from hardware; and wet, from biochemistry. Artificial life researchers study traditional biology by trying to recreate aspects of biological phenomena.
Luis M. Rocha is the George J. Klir Professor of Systems Science at the Thomas J. Watson College of Engineering and Applied Science, Binghamton University. He has been director of the NSF-NRT Complex Networks and Systems graduate Program in Informatics at Indiana University, Bloomington, USA. He is also director of the Center for Social and Biomedical Complexity, between Binghamton University and Indiana University, Bloomington, a Fulbright Scholar, and Principal Investigator at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência, Portugal. His research is on complex systems and networks, computational and systems biology, biomedical complexity and digital health, and computational intelligence.
J. Stephen Lansing is an American anthropologist and complexity scientist. He is especially known from his decades of research on the emergent properties of human-environmental interactions in Bali, Borneo and the Malay Archipelago; social-ecological modeling, and complex adaptive systems. He is an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute and the Complexity Science Hub Vienna; a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford; a visiting scholar at the Hoffman Global Institute for Business and Society at INSEAD Singapore, and emeritus professor of anthropology at the University of Arizona.
Stefan Thurner is an Austrian physicist and complexity researcher. He has been professor for Science of Complex Systems at the Medical University of Vienna since 2009, external professor at the Santa Fe Institute since 2007, and guest professor at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore since 2016.
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