Systems Science Friday Noon Seminar Series

The Systems Science Seminar Series covers a wide range of topics, providing an opportunity for presenters to share and attendees to become exposed to the latest research from different fields and disciplines. Agent-based simulation, artificial intelligence, artificial life, genetic algorithms, machine learning, neural networks, signal processing, social networks, system dynamics, and science itself are just a few of the many diverse topics that have been presented, all in an informal environment where questions and discussion are encouraged.
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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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Modern Neural Networks for Time-Series Forecasting (Transformers vs. LSTMs)

Sandy Dash

3-17-2023

Transformer network was first introduced in 2017 in the paper: Attention is all you need. They solve sequence-to-sequence tasks and are an improvement over Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) because ...Read More
Prediction and Policy/Intervention Analysis

Wayne Wakeland

3-10-2023

The talk will explore a conundrum related to policy/intervention focused system dynamics models. Although making predictions is fraught with risk, in order to compare alternative policies or interventions we must ...Read More
A Holistic Approach to Managerial Decision Making

Jeffrey Yi-Lin Forrest

3-3-2023

This talk aims at providing decision makers and scholars with a readily available tool and a brand-new approach so that managers and entrepreneurs know their decisions are mostly reliable and ...Read More
The LUST Algorithm: A Discrete Mathematical Method for Analyzing Genetic Expression Data

Tristan Holmes

2-17-2023

The Lattice Upstream Targeting Algorithm applies the theory of finite ordered sets to create a predictive model of outcomes for cancer patients based on genetic expression data from biopsied tumor ...Read More
Improving Oregon's Geologic Map with Satellite Data and Machine Learning

David Percy

2-10-2023

The Geologic Map of Oregon needs help! This map is unique among the states in the USA for being composed of the best available data for each area, based on ...Read More
Quantum Theory only Makes Sense in a Participatory Systems Engineering Thermodynamics Framework

Terry Bristol

2-3-2023

There is a longstanding problem of making sense of quantum theory. Feynman’s assertion, “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics” remains unchallenged. Yet, experimentalists tell us ...Read More
Modeler at Work: Notes from the Field

Alex Nielsen

1-27-2023

I have been working at OHSU since May, 2020 building simulation models for operational decision support. Simulation modeling is not all I do—I also do some standard statistical forecasting and ...Read More
Monte Carlo Tree Search

Nick Embry

1-20-2023

The Monte-Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) algorithm became prominent in the 2010s by facilitating the first AI players capable of human-level play in the game of Go. Most notably, it provided ...Read More
Cultural Systems

Ruth Miller

1-13-2023

Ruth-Ellen L. Miller, a graduate of the PSU Systems Science Ph.D. program ('84), applies qualitative systems thinking and insights as a futurist and program developer in communities, organizations, and cultures. ...Read More
Speed-Bumps and Accelerants on the Road from Horsepower to Solar Power

Steve Staloff

12-2-2022

Beating global warming requires moving to a nearly entirely solar powered economy, thereby (1) removing sources of heat that would otherwise have to be radiated into space from the biosphere ...Read More
Speculative Realism and Systems Metaphysics

Martin Zwick

11-11-2022

Recent developments in Continental philosophy have included emergence of a school of “speculative realism” which rejects the human-centered orientation that has long dominated Continental thought, but also opposes naïve realism ...Read More
Systems Diagramming to Support Implementation Science Research in the SMARTER CRC Study

Erin Kenzie

11-4-2022

The uptake of evidence-based health care interventions into clinical practice is slow, particularly for under- resourced clinics. The field of implementation science studies strategies for identifying, adapting, and implementing evidence-based ...Read More
Health Restoration from a Salutogenic Perspective

Steve Chamberlin

10-28-2022

The concept of salutogenesis, or health restoration, was introduced as a psychosocial model of health by Aaron Antonovsky in 1979. It is described as an orientation towards health promotion and ...Read More
Hydropower Design Under an Uncertain Hydrologic and Energy Market Future

Mark Parrish

10-21-2022

The USACE and Bonneville Power Administration utilize a stochastic modeling procedure to justify long term capital investments that incorporates uncertainty in hydrologic data, energy prices, failure and construction costs, and ...Read More
Open-Ended Development in Role Systems

Shane Dicks

10-7-2022

This seminar outlines an Artificial Life approach to explore the phenomena of growth and development in ecological, economic, and social systems at an abstract level. “Development” is the emergence of ...Read More
Open Ended Evolution in Artificial Life

Shane Dicks

3-11-2022

How can we explain the explosion of diversity and complexity in the biosphere, from the emergence of single celled organisms to the panoply of living things we now observe? Human ...Read More
Smart Methods for Complex Policy Evaluation

Brian Castellani

3-4-2022

Advances in the integration of smart technology, computational modelling and statistical platforms has created a new methods environment, approachable modelling and smart methods – AM- Smart for short. The AM-Smart ...Read More
The Development and Role of Mental Action During Early Evolution and the Origin of Life

Steve Staloff

2-25-2022

Studies of the earliest part of an evolutionary sequence and the origin of life have, to now, focused on molecular factors without discussing how a lineage starts evolving and generating ...Read More
Adoption of Prosocial Common Pool Behavior

Garry Sotnik and Tad Shannon

2-18-2022

New theoretical agent-based model of population-wide adoption of prosocial common-pool behavior with four parameters (initial percent of adopters, pressure to change behavior, synergy from behavior, and population density); dynamics in ...Read More
The Emerging Field of Data Engineering

Guy Cutting

2-11-2022

Organizations of all sizes are dealing with rapidly growing volumes of data and are trying to decide how best to use that data to their advantage. With the rise of ...Read More
Racial Justice as Climate Justice

Julius Mcgee

2-4-2022

As the climate crisis escalates the asymmetry of climatic effects on human populations is increasingly apparent. From wildfires to flooding, the populations affected by climate change are often the ones ...Read More
Is Strategic Energy Management (SEM) a Holistic Approach?

Dave Hall

1-28-2022

Dave is an SEM Coach at Energy 350, where he works with industrial and agricultural operations to implement Strategic Energy Management (SEM). SEM focuses on short and long-term organizational change ...Read More
Rosenstock's "Cross of Reality" a Space-Time Framework for Isomorphisms

Martin Zwick

1-21-2022

This talk is a systems philosophical examination of Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy’s “cross of reality,” a structure that fuses a spatial dyad of inner-outer and a temporal dyad of past-future into a ...Read More
PreK-12 Students Have Learned to Build Systems Models to Analyze the Dynamics of Systems, Including Non-linear Behavior

Diana Fisher

1-14-2022

Analysis of complex systems is woefully missing from pre-college education, currently, and that analysis is essential for anyone who wants to have a chance to understand the myriad complex systems ...Read More
Communication Systems, and Communication Within Systems, for People with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis

Betts Peters

1-7-2022

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that causes muscle weakness and loss of voluntary motor function, ultimately resulting in partial or complete paralysis. Many people with ALS ...Read More