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.
Join Via Zoom
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.

Printing is not supported at the primary Gallery Thumbnail page. Please first navigate to a specific Image before printing.

Switch View to Grid View Slideshow

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
Getting a Grip on Global Warming Quickly via a Specialized Emissions Money

Steve Staloff

12-3-2021

Quickly reducing greenhouse gas emissions, currently the main driver of global warming, requires a coordinated change in economic choices throughout the economy. Since prices coordinate economic behaviors, that means prices ...Read More
Design, Systems Approaches and the Engineering-economics Nexus

Cesar Garcia-Diaz

11-19-2021

Economics and engineering are discovering new opportunities for cross-fertilization. This is partly given to the advent of modern artificial intelligence methods. These opportunities have appeared in the past, resulting in ...Read More
Using Computer Models to Support Court Cases

Wayne Wakeland

11-12-2021

Computer models are frequently published and therefore scrutinized by peers. Authors must provide detailed model documentation, and sometimes model-based papers are rejected due to inadequate documentation and/or model weaknesses (in ...Read More
Graphical Models in Reconstructability Analysis and Bayesian Networks

Marcus Harris

11-5-2021

This talk will focus on the primary results from the recent manuscript publication, Graphical Models in Reconstructability Analysis and Bayesian Networks, in the Journal Entropy. Reconstructability Analysis (RA) ...Read More
It's Mostly Assumptions: Modeling a Pandemic

Peter Graven

10-29-2021

COVID-19 has engulfed the planet and decision-makers are dealing with a situation that affects life in extreme proportions. Unfortunately, the virus has given many twists and turns and isn't done ...Read More
Systemic Innovation and Collaboration: New Leadership Approaches for Public Policy And Systems Change

Roderick Campbell

10-22-2021

We are increasingly facing highly interdependent issues that span stakeholder, jurisdictional, and geopolitical boundaries which have to be managed rather than solved. We know that traditional policy and management approaches ...Read More
Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping: Is a Hot Dog a Sandwich

Catherine Moore

10-15-2021

Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping is a modeling modality that focuses on capturing human knowledge and understanding. They offer an accessible, quick modeling process that can be used to capture an individual’s ...Read More
The Systems Engineering Worldview: The Technological Structure and Function of Reality

Terry Bristol

10-8-2021

The research reported here is concerned with understanding the components and composition of reality, according to the systems engineering worldview. To start, George Bugliarello argues that what engineers do, their ...Read More
Get Your Model Out There: Advancing Methods for Developing and Using Causal-Loop Diagrams

Erin S. Kenzie

2-3-2021

As simple visual diagrams of key dynamics in complex systems, causal-loop diagrams could meet known needs in settings such as theory-based program evaluation and qualitative research. Methods for developing and ...Read More