New England Complex Systems Institute

Last updated
New England Complex Systems Institute
TypeNon-Profit
IndustryResearch
Founded1996
Headquarters Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Key people
 Yaneer Bar-Yam, Founding President
ProductsStudy of complex systems
Website necsi.edu

The New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI) is an independent American research institution and think tank dedicated to advancing analytics and its application to the challenges of society, and the interaction of complex systems with the environment. NECSI offers educational programs, conducts research, and hosts the International Conference on Complex Systems. It was founded in 1996 and is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. [1]

Contents

Overview

NECSI was established in 1996 by faculty of various New England academic institutions, including MIT, Harvard, Brandeis, and others, to encourage communication and collaboration among researchers studying complex systems. [2]

The NECSI web site describes "complex systems" as follows: [1]

Complex systems have multiple interacting components whose collective behavior cannot be simply inferred from the behavior of components. The recognition that understanding the parts cannot explain collective behavior has led to various new concepts and methodologies that are affecting all fields of science and engineering, and are being applied to technology, business and even social policy.

NECSI promotes collaboration and dissemination of new research among complex systems researchers in wide-ranging disciplines and numerous institutions. NECSI's activities for this purpose include hosting an international research conference and maintaining a roster of affiliated scholars and co-faculty.

International Conference on Complex Systems

NECSI hosts the International Conference on Complex Systems (ICCS), whose aims are:

first, to investigate those properties or characteristics that appear to be common to the very different complex systems now under study; and second, to encourage cross fertilization among the many disciplines involved. [3]

ICCS takes place on an occasional basis, with the most recent (eighth conference) in 2011. ICCS conferences have featured notable computer scientists (e.g., Gerald Sussman), mathematicians (e.g., Stephen Wolfram), systems theorists (e.g., John Sterman), physicists (e.g. Sandy Pentland), economists (e.g., James Stock), and others. Events at ICCS include research presentations and workshops, as well as pedagogical sessions aimed at a wider community.

Affiliates and co-faculty

NECSI provides a public platform for affiliates and co-faculty at numerous academic institutions, primarily in the New England region. These researchers also contribute to NECSI educational programs. [4]

Faculty and co-Faculty
Affiliates

Research areas

Evolution and ecology

NECSI researchers have contributed to the understanding of evolutionary dynamics, the evolution of altruism, the origin and characterization of biodiversity, and the interplay between evolution and ecology.

Much of the work done at NECSI has focused on the role of the spatial distribution of species, an often overlooked factor of evolutionary dynamics. In the case where portions of a population are geographically isolated from each other, for example, Yaneer Bar-Yam was able to demonstrate shortcomings in the gene-centered view of evolution, an approximation that is valid only if there is complete mixing of alleles in the gene pool. [5]

Networks

Studies of network topologies have found surprising similarities between a variety of complex social, technological and biological networks. NECSI research in networks focuses on the relationship between structure, dynamics and function. The study of networks has emerged in diverse disciplines as a means of analyzing complex relational data.

Social systems

NECSI research in social systems focuses on the collective actions that create revolutions, ethnic violence, urban health, fads and panics, global food and so on. The role of individuals and organization can be analyzed by techniques and tools of complex systems.

Representation

Complex systems exhibit behaviors at a variety of spatial and temporal scales. Researchers working at NECSI have developed a mathematical formalism for simultaneously describing systems on multiple scales. This formalism had been applied to physical systems, information systems, organizational behavior, engineering projects and military conflict.

An essential tool for multiscale analysis, the complexity profile, the relationship between the observed complexity of a system and the scale of observation.

Post-crisis focus on social and economic systems

Since 2009, the Institute's research focus has shifted to socio-economic systems, with particular attention to the causes and consequences of the 2008 financial crisis and dynamics of Twitter networks and social sentiment. Policy-relevant articles on stock market regulation and market crashes, [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] food riots and the causes of high food prices, [11] [12] [13] and the European bond crisis [14] have been released straight to the press. Peer-reviewed articles continue to appear on other subjects. [15] [16] [17]

Further fields of research

Public attention

NECSI's work on the global food crisis has been widely cited by the press, [18] [19] [20] by movements to curb financial speculation, [21] [22] and included among the top-10 discoveries in science in 2011 by Wired. [23] NECSI's scientific visualizations have received multiple citations on top-10 lists. [24] [25] [26]

NECSI has been called "a pioneer in using mathematics, computation and other quantitative methods to analyse topics like ethnic violence, economic crises and healthcare systems" by the press. [27]

Early Warning on the COVID-19 Coronavirus Pandemic

Prior to global lockdowns, in January, 2020 Joseph Norman, Yaneer Bar Yam, and Nassim Taleb submitted a paper to the White House administration, urging them to take drastic steps to curtail the disease. [28] NECSI later assembled EndCoronaVirus.org, which included over 4,000 volunteers by March 21, 2020. The network of volunteers built endCoronavirus.org with the goal to minimize the impact of COVID-19 by providing useful data and guidelines for action. [29]

See also

Related Research Articles

Social dynamics Study of behavior of groups

Social dynamics is the study of the behavior of groups that results from the interactions of individual group members as well to the study of the relationship between individual interactions and group level behaviors.

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 the entire universe.

Stock market crash Sudden widespread decline of stock prices

A stock market crash is a sudden dramatic decline of stock prices across a major cross-section of a stock market, resulting in a significant loss of paper wealth. Crashes are driven by panic selling and underlying economic factors. They often follow speculation and economic bubbles.

Econophysics is a heterodox interdisciplinary research field, applying theories and methods originally developed by physicists in order to solve problems in economics, usually those including uncertainty or stochastic processes and nonlinear dynamics. Some of its application to the study of financial markets has also been termed statistical finance referring to its roots in statistical physics. Econophysics is closely related to social physics.

Ethnic violence is a form of political violence expressly motivated by ethnic hatred and ethnic conflict. Forms of ethnic violence which can be argued to have the character of terrorism may be known as ethnic terrorism or ethnically-motivated terrorism. "Racist terrorism" is a form of ethnic violence dominated by overt racism and xenophobic reactionism.

System of systems is a collection of task-oriented or dedicated systems that pool their resources and capabilities together to create a new, more complex system which offers more functionality and performance than simply the sum of the constituent systems. Currently, systems of systems is a critical research discipline for which frames of reference, thought processes, quantitative analysis, tools, and design methods are incomplete. The methodology for defining, abstracting, modeling, and analyzing system of systems problems is typically referred to as system of systems engineering.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb Lebanese-American author (born 1960)

Nassim Nicholas Taleb is a Lebanese-American essayist, mathematical statistician, former option trader, risk analyst, and aphorist whose work concerns problems of randomness, probability, and uncertainty. The Sunday Times called his 2007 book The Black Swan one of the 12 most influential books since World War II.

A complex adaptive system is a system that is complex in that it is a dynamic network of interactions, but the behavior of the ensemble may not be predictable according to the behavior of the components. It is adaptive in that the individual and collective behavior mutate and self-organize corresponding to the change-initiating micro-event or collection of events. It is a "complex macroscopic collection" of relatively "similar and partially connected micro-structures" formed in order to adapt to the changing environment and increase their survivability as a macro-structure. The Complex Adaptive Systems approach builds on replicator dynamics.

J. Doyne Farmer American physicist and entrepreneur (b.1952)

J. Doyne Farmer is an American complex systems scientist and entrepreneur with interests in chaos theory, complexity and econophysics. He is Baillie Gifford Professor of Mathematics at Oxford University, where he is also Director of the Complexity Economics at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School. Additionally he is an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute. His current research is on complexity economics, focusing on systemic risk in financial markets and technological progress. During his career he has made important contributions to complex systems, chaos, artificial life, theoretical biology, time series forecasting and econophysics. He co-founded Prediction Company, one of the first companies to do fully automated quantitative trading. While a graduate student he led a group that called itself Eudaemonic Enterprises and built the first wearable digital computer, which was used to beat the game of roulette.

Erik Rauch was an American biophysicist and theoretical ecologist who worked at NECSI, MIT, Santa Fe Institute, Yale University, Princeton University, and other institutions. Rauch's most notable paper was published in Nature and concerned the mathematical modeling of the conservation of biodiversity.

Complexity theory and organizations, also called complexity strategy or complex adaptive organizations, is the use of the study of complexity systems in the field of strategic management and organizational studies. It draws from research in the natural sciences that examines uncertainty and non-linearity. Complexity theory emphasizes interactions and the accompanying feedback loops that constantly change systems. While it proposes that systems are unpredictable, they are also constrained by order-generating rules.

Yaneer Bar-Yam

Yaneer Bar-Yam is an American scientist and activist specializing in complex systems. An expert in the quantitative analysis of pandemics, he advised policy makers on the Western African Ebola virus epidemic and founded EndCoronavirus.org, a global network of over 4,000 volunteers formed in February 2020 to provide information, guidelines, and policy advocacy to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. He is the founding president of the New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI), an independent research institution that studies complex systems science and its real-world applications.

Public safety agencies at various levels of government have joined together to share information and communicate when faced with public safety incidents. Interagency collaboration initiatives of this nature result in the creation of public safety networks. Public safety networks may originate at any level of government, and their user base may span a single or multiple geographies. Such a network of public safety agencies, supported by an information and communications technology infrastructure, emerges from the individual and collaborative behaviors of their member agencies.

Dirk Helbing

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.

Didier Sornette

Didier Sornette has been Professor on the Chair of Entrepreneurial Risks at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich since March 2006. He is also a professor of the Swiss Finance Institute, and a professor associated with both the department of Physics and the department of Earth Sciences at ETH Zurich. He was previously jointly a Professor of Geophysics at UCLA, Los Angeles California (1996–2006) and a Research Professor at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (1981–2006), working on the theory and prediction of complex systems. Pioneer in econophysics, in 1994, he co-founded with Jean-Philippe Bouchaud the company Science et Finance, which later merged with Capital Fund Management (CFM) in 2000. He left however Science et Finance in 1997 to focus on his shared position as Research Professor at the CNRS in France (1990–2006) and Professor at UCLA (1996–2006).

<i>Antifragile</i> (book) 2012 book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder is a book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb published on November 27, 2012, by Random House in the United States and Penguin in the United Kingdom. This book builds upon ideas from his previous works including Fooled by Randomness (2001), The Black Swan (2007–2010), and The Bed of Procrustes (2010–2016) and is the fourth book in the five-volume philosophical treatise on uncertainty titled Incerto. Some of the ideas are expanded in Taleb’s fifth book Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life (2018).

Rare or extreme events are events that occur with low frequency, and often refers to infrequent events that have widespread impact and which might destabilize systems. Rare events encompass natural phenomena, anthropogenic hazards, as well as phenomena for which natural and anthropogenic factors interact in complex ways.

Carlos Gershenson is a Mexican researcher at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. His academic interests include self-organizing systems, complexity, and artificial life.

Raissa DSouza American computer scientist

Raissa M. D'Souza is the Associate Dean of Research for the College of Engineering and a Professor of Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, Davis as well as an External Professor and member of the Science Board at the Santa Fe Institute. She was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2016 and Fellow of the Network Science Society in 2019. D'Souza works on theory and complex systems.

References

  1. 1 2 "New England Complex Systems Institute". New England Complex Systems Institute.
  2. ↑ Unifying Themes in Complex Systems: Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Complex Systems, eds. Yaneer Bar-Yam, Ali A. Minai, Westview Press: Colorado, 2000.
  3. ↑ International Conference on Complex Systems 2011, http://www.necsi.edu/events/iccs2011/index.html
  4. ↑ NECSI Short Courses, New England Complex Systems Institute, http://www.necsi.edu/education/short.html
  5. ↑ Bar-Yam, Y. Formalizing the gene-centered view of evolution Adv. Complex Syst. 2 (3) 277-281 (1999).
  6. ↑ D. Harmon, B. Stacey, Y. Bar-Yam, Y. Bar-Yam, Networks of economic market interdependence and systemic risk. arXiv:1011.3707v2 (2010). http://necsi.edu/research/economics/interdependence.html
  7. ↑ D. Harmon, and Y. Bar-Yam, Technical Report on SEC Uptick Repeal Pilot. NECSI Technical Report 2008-11 http://www.necsi.edu/research/UptickTechReport.pdf (2008).
  8. ↑ D. Harmon, M. de Aguiar, D. Chinellato, D. Braha, I. Epstein, Y. Bar-Yam, Predicting economic market crises using measures of collective panic. arXiv:1102.2620v1 (2011). http://necsi.edu/research/economics/economicpanic.html
  9. ↑ V. Misra, M. Lagi, Y. Bar-Yam, Evidence of market manipulation in the financial crisis.arXiv:1112.3095 (2011). http://necsi.edu/research/economics/bearraid.html
  10. ↑ Harmon D, Lagi M, de Aguiar MAM, Chinellato DD, Braha D, Epstein IR, et al. (2015). "Anticipating Economic Market Crises Using Measures of Collective Panic." PLoS ONE 10(7): e0131871.doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0131871.
  11. ↑ M. Lagi, Y. Bar-Yam, K.Z. Bertrand, Y. Bar-Yam, The Food Crises: A Quantitative Model of Food Prices Including Speculators and Ethanol Conversion. arXiv:1109.4859 (2011). http://necsi.edu/research/social/foodprices.html
  12. ↑ M. Lagi, K.Z. Bertrand, Y. Bar-Yam, The Food Crises and Political Instability in North Africa and the Middle East. arXiv:1108.2455, August 10, 2011. http://necsi.edu/research/social/foodcrises.html
  13. ↑ M. Lagi, Yavni Bar-Yam, Yaneer Bar-Yam, UPDATE July 2012 — The Food Crises: The US Drought, July 23, 2012.http://necsi.edu/research/social/foodprices/updatejuly2012/
  14. ↑ M. Lagi, Y. Bar-Yam, The European debt crisis: Defaults and market equilibrium. arXiv: 1209.6369 (2012). http://necsi.edu/research/economics/bondprices/
  15. ↑ A. Herdağdelen, W. Zuo, A.S. Gard-Murray, Y. Bar-Yam, An Exploration of Social Identity: The Geography and Politics of News-Sharing Communities in Twitter, Complexity 19, 10-20 (2013).DOI: 10.1002/cplx.21457
  16. ↑ J. Adebayo, T. Musso, K. Virdee, C. Friedman, Y. Bar-Yam, An Exploration of Social Identity: The Structure of the BBC News-Sharing Community on Twitter. Complexity DOI: 10.1002/cplx.21490
  17. ↑ A. B. Martins, M. A. M. de Aguiar, and Yaneer Bar-Yam, Evolution and Stability of Ring Species. PNAS 201217034 (March 11, 2013).
  18. ↑ Kharunya Paramaguru, Time (December 17, 2102), http://science.time.com/2012/12/17/betting-on-hunger-is-financial-speculation-to-blame-for-high-food-prices/
  19. ↑ Keim, Brandon (October 5, 2011). "Biofuels, Speculation Blamed for Global Food Market Weirdness". Wired– via www.wired.com.
  20. ↑ http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/a-complex-systems-model-predicted-the-revolutions-sweeping-the-globe-right [ dead link ]
  21. ↑ "foodwatch International". Foodwatch EN.
  22. ↑ http://www.wdm.org.uk/stop-bankers-betting-food/depth-research [ dead link ]
  23. ↑ Staff, WIRED (December 27, 2011). "Top Scientific Discoveries of 2011". Wired– via www.wired.com.
  24. ↑ Keim, Brandon (December 25, 2013). "The Best Scientific Visualizations of 2013". Wired– via www.wired.com.
  25. ↑ Keim, Brandon (December 13, 2011). "The Design of Science: 10 Great Research Graphics". Wired– via www.wired.com.
  26. ↑ http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/the-best-map-porn-of-2013 [ dead link ]
  27. ↑ "The Economic Times".
  28. ↑ Norman, Joseph; Bar-Yam, Yaneer; Taleb, Nassim Nicholas. "SYSTEMIC RISK OF PANDEMIC VIA NOVEL PATHOGENS – CORONAVIRUS: A Note". NECSI. NECSI. Retrieved March 21, 2020.
  29. ↑ Bar-Yam, Yaneer. "Volunteer Status". Twitter. Retrieved March 21, 2020.
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