
Systems Science Friday Noon Seminar Series
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Speaker Schedule
Unless otherwise specified, seminars are held on Fridays from 12-1 p.m. in Harder House Room 104 throughout Fall and Winter terms. For those taking the seminar for credit, grading is based on attendance, either in-person or remote.
CONTACT US: If you have questions, comments, or topic/speaker suggestions, or if you would like to present a seminar, please email Wayne Wakeland.
SEMINAR ANNOUNCEMENT LISTSERV: To receive seminar announcements, you can join our mailing list. If that doesn't work, please email Wayne Wakeland.
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Do. Or Do Not.* An Introduction to Urnomics
Christian Echt
3-13-2020
Why do things do stuff ?
With at least as much high-falootin’ technical jargon as the previous sentence, this presentation will ruminate on preferences and agency. While there is considerable merit ...Read More -
Adoption Patterns in the Diffusion of Distributed Energy Resources
Josh Keeling
3-6-2020
Given the growing trends towards decentralization and decarbonization of the power sector, there is an increasing need to understand how customers make energy decisions at a more granular level. This ...Read More
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Framing Wicked Problems: Harnessing Collective Intelligence with Participatory Modeling and Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping
Peter Roolf
2-28-2020
Wicked problems are issues facing human social systems that are persistent or reoccurring, have difficult-to-detect origins, complex networks of causation, and that respond to interventions by generating undesirable unintended consequences. ...Read More
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What is Not a System?
Gary Langford
2-21-2020
The difficulties in applying General Systems Theory (GST) have pointed out notable inconsistencies in what needs to be included in GST, intransitivities between competing or subsidiary theories based on GST ...Read More
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Modeling Post-fire Successional Trajectories under Climate Change in Interior Alaska using Landis II
Shelby A. Weiss
2-14-2020
Alaska boreal forest ecosystems are experiencing a greater frequency of wildfire relative to the region’s historic fire regime. These increases in fire frequency, as well as annual burned area, increase ...Read More
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Realist Evaluation: A Systems Approach for Understanding and Assessing Complex Social Programs
Dora Raymaker
2-7-2020
Realist evaluation, a theory-driven approach to program evaluation grounded in realist philosophy, is designed to address the question: What works for whom, to what extent, in what circumstances, and why? ...Read More
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Application of Reconstructability Analysis to the NW Power Grid
Marcus Harris
1-31-2020
This talk will focus on preliminary results from Reconstructability Analysis (RA) models, Bayesian Network (BN) models, and standard linear regression to predict dynamics on the bulk electric grid. The best ...Read More
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Using GIS Raster Data Analysis with Reconstructability Analysis Tools
David Percy
1-24-2020
Reconstructability Analysis (RA) has been successfully used to analyze a myriad of different data types. At its core it relies on a row-based approach to data where each row represents ...Read More
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Statistical Analysis of Social Network Change
Teresa D. Schmidt
1-10-2020
We explore two statistical methods that infer social network structures and statistically test those structures for change over time: regression-based differential network analysis (R-DNA) and information theory-based differential network analysis ...Read More
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Computational Social Science Society of Americas (CSSA) Conferences as a Venue for Publication and Outreach
Rajesh Venkatachalapathy
12-6-2019
I had the opportunity to present my work at CSS18 and CSS19 and was/am pleasantly surprised by its casual and stimulating ambience. The themes of this conference are highly aligned ...Read More
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Computational Integration for Augmenting Human Cognition
David Lawrence
11-22-2019
How can we improve the relationship between people and technology? Is society forever indentured to surveillance capitalists, consigned to behaving for the benefit of elite others? We think not, and ...Read More
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Recursive Identity and Purposeful Change
Howard Silverman
11-15-2019
Numerous theorists have used the concept of “identity” to characterize persistence and change in the experience and analysis of social and/or ecological systems. These include: Allena Leonard and Niklas Luhmann ...Read More
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Computing Complex Tasks with Dynamical Cellular Systems
Neil Babson
11-8-2019
Computing with ultra-simple, small, dynamical systems, such as Cellular Automata (CA), Random Boolean Networks (RBNs), or Reservoir Computers (RC) is appealing because such systems are in general ultra-low power and ...Read More
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Using Large-Scale Meteorological Patterns to Better Understand Local-Scale Weather and Climate Extremes
Paul Loikith
11-1-2019
High-impact weather and climate events such as temperature extremes, heavy rainfall, and lightning are all associated with numerous impacts on society and the environment. Furthermore, anthropogenic climate change is broadly ...Read More
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Motivating the Quickest Possible Economic Transition to Low Fossil Fuel Use: Theory and Application
Steve Staloff
10-18-2019
This research addresses the quickest means of minimizing fossil fuel use and, thus, the existential threat of climate change due to the impact of greenhouse gas accumulation. The apparently simple ...Read More
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A Computational Model for Recovery from Brain Injury
Wayne Wakeland
10-11-2019
A computational simulation model calculates recovery trajectories following traumatic brain injury (TBI). Prior publications include a multi-scale framework for studying concussion and a systems-level causal loop diagram (CLD) and discussion ...Read More
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Intergenerational & Environmental Drivers of Obesity: an Agent Based Model Approach
Dale Frakes
10-4-2019
Obesity prevalence remains high and exhibits pronounced social patterning in the U.S., despite widespread intervention efforts. Complex individual, environmental, and intergenerational influences on obesity are difficult to study using traditional ...Read More
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Fractal Dimension as Objective Function in a Genetic Algorithm for Application in Architectural Design
John Charles Driscoll
3-15-2019
One of the goals of The Green New Deal Resolution reads, “upgrading all existing buildings in the United States and building new buildings to achieve maximal energy efficiency, water efficiency, ...Read More
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Managing Healthcare Data Assets as a Complex Adaptive System
Katie Clifton
3-8-2019
A major project is underway to develop a shared platform for data and analytics in a highly federated healthcare delivery organization. In the status quo data environment, analysts have integrated ...Read More
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Systems Thinking as a Design Process
Elizabeth Lockwood
3-1-2019
During my master’s degree I analyzed sustainable practices in the built environment. What came from that work was a deep level of understanding that the current practices and rating systems ...Read More
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IoT and Digitization Will Reconnect System Engineering and Science
John Blyler
2-22-2019
The fully connected world is quickly becoming a reality. Architects and developers of this new world must understand both the hardware and software basics of IoT and IIoT systems as ...Read More
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Performativity of Models
Rajesh Venkatachalapathy
2-15-2019
Inspired by Latour's work in social studies of science and technology, Callon, MacKenzie and others developed a performativity critique of economics. Building on this, Healy (2015) recently discussed ...Read More
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What if our Beliefs about a System are not Wholly Accurate? What if?
Gary Langford
2-1-2019
For most people, a system is a construct with vexing complexities, many many parts, and perhaps wrapped with a goal or intention. Add to that simple construct a set of ...Read More
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The Complexities of Open Data
Hector Dominguez
1-18-2019
Hector Dominguez is the current Open Data Coordinator at the City of Portland, and there are several lessons learned and strategies developed in the several months of work in this ...Read More
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Latent Space Models for Temporal Networks
Jasper Alt
1-11-2019
In many contexts we may expect the structure of networks to be derived from some kind of abstract distance between actors. We refer to this phenomenon as homophily: like nodes ...Read More