EVENT RECORDINGS

Complex Systems Seminar Series Presents: "Leaders and Best: Networks and Ranking in Sports, Markets, and Society" <---(Click to View Seminar - includes abstract)

Mark Newman | Department of Physics, Complex Systems | University of Michigan

Date of Seminar: September 5, 2023

Abstract: One of the oldest of network problems is the ranking of individuals, teams, or commodities on the basis of pairwise comparisons between them. For example, if you know which football teams beat which others in a particular year, can you say which team is the best overall? This is a harder problem than it sounds because not all pairs of teams play games in a given season, and also because the outcomes of the games can be ambiguous or contradictory...FOR FULL ABSTRACT AND EVENT LISTING CLICK HERE

Complex Systems Seminar Series Presents: "Geometric frustration, self-assembly, mechanics, and pathways to complexity"  <---(Click to View Seminar - includes abstract)

Xiaoming Mao, Department of Physics, University of Michigan

Date of Seminar:  April 11, 2023

ABSTRACT: Self-organized complex structures in nature, from hierarchical biopolymers to viral capsids and organisms, offer efficiency, adaptability, robustness, and multifunctionality. How are these structures assembled? Can we understand the fundamental principles behind their formation, and assemble similar structures and can we utilize similar mechanisms to program new ... FOR FULL ABSTRACT AND EVENT LISTING CLICK HERE

Complex Systems Seminar Series Presents: "Can Governance be Reconciled with Uncertainty in Machine Learning? Challenges and Opportunities concerning Accountability and Variance" <---(Click to View Seminar - includes abstract) 

A. Feder Cooper | PhD Candidate Computer Science | Cornell University

Date of Seminar:  March 23, 2023

ABSTRACT: Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) researchers are confronted daily with the reality that our field has become a stand-in in popular discourse for a variety of public anxieties, political debates, and metaphysical questions about human nature and intelligence. Among such weighty topics .... FOR FULL ABSTRACT AND EVENT LISTING CLICK HERE

Complex Systems Seminar Series Presents: "Controlling stochastic biophysical processes, from protein folding to evolution" <---(Click to View Seminar - includes abstract) 

Michael Hinczewski | Department of Physics | Case Western Reserve University

Date of Seminar:  March 14, 2023

ABSTRACT: The chemical reaction networks that regulate living systems are all stochastic to varying degrees. The resulting randomness affects biological outcomes at multiple scales, from the probability that a single protein molecule successfully finds its folded state to the evolutionary trajectory of a population of cells. Understanding .... FOR FULL ABSTRACT AND EVENT LISTING CLICK HERE

Complex Systems Seminar Series Presents: "Percolation in an antagonistic model of two-species random sequential adsorption" <---(Click to View Seminar - includes abstract) 

Robert Ziff | School of Engineering, Department of Chemical Engineering | University of Michigan

Date of Seminar:  February 14, 2023

ABSTRACT: An important paradigm in non-equilibrium physics is the Random Sequential Adsorption (RSA) problem, where objects adsorb on a surface randomly and one at at time, with the rule that if another object is there already such that an overlap would occur, the attempted adsorption is rejected. This leads to an ever-slowing filling of the surface until,..... FOR FULL ABSTRACT AND EVENT LISTING CLICK HERE

Complex Systems Seminar Series Presents: "Physics of cellular proportions" <---(Click to View Seminar - includes abstract) 

Jané Kondev | School of Physics | Brandeis University

Date of Seminar:  February 7, 2023

ABSTRACT: Dr. Gulliver noticed 140 years ago that the size of the cell\'s nucleus is proportional to the size of the cell. In the intervening years, similar observations have been made about other, large structures that self-assemble in the cell. This raises a fascinating question:,..... FOR FULL ABSTRACT AND EVENT LISTING CLICK HERE

Complex Systems Special Public Event: Carl Bergstrom presents “The crisis of human collective decision-making in a social media world” <--- CLICK TO WATCH TALK

Carl Bergstrom, Department of Biology, University of Washington

Presented: January 31, 2023 in Rackham Amphitheatre

ABSTRACT: We are a species of information foragers. Individually and collectively, we have evolved to scour our natural and social environments for useful information. Over the past twenty years, society has constructed an information pipeline, the so-called Internet 2.0, to satisfy and profit from our evolved desires for novel information and social connection. What happens when the scale of human communication is radically transformed in the span of a generation, and our mechanisms for creating collective understanding are upended? What happens when this entire process is not stewarded to promote the spread of accurate information, strengthen democracy, and advance human well-being—but rather is to a first approximation engineered by machine learning algorithms to get people to click on advertisements? ... CLICK HERE FOR ABSTRACT AND FULL EVENT LISTING

Complex Systems Seminar Series Presents: "The Effects of Task Complexity on Group Synergy" (Click to View)

Duncan Watts - University of Pennsylvania:  Annenberg School of Communication and Wharton School of Business

Date of Seminar:  April 15, 2021

Abstract:  Complexity—defined in terms of the number of components to a problem and the nature the inter-dependencies between them—is clearly a relevant feature of all tasks performed by groups. Yet the role that task complexity plays in determining group performance remains poorly understood, in part because no clear language exists to express it in a way that allows for straightforward comparisons across tasks.  ........FOR FULL ABSTRACT AND EVENT LISTING CLICK HERE

Complex Systems Seminar Presents "New data, models, and methods to guide SARS-CoV-2 vaccine design and vaccination programs that counter escape mutations" (Click to view)

James Koopman Epidemiology, School of Public Health, University of Michigan; Carl Simon, Complex Systems, Math, Public Policy, University of Michigan

Date of Seminar: March 2, 2021

Abstract: Before the emergence of escape mutants that now threaten pandemic control, we constructed and analyzed the first model integrating immune waning and escape mutations. In the model, escape mutants were not problematic until a year into the pandemic. After they emerged, vaccination could worsen the pandemic. We examined four patterns by which existing escape mutants ... SEE FULL ABSTRACT AND EVENT LISTING HERE

Complex Systems Seminar Series Presents:  "Low rattling: A predictive principle for self-organization in active collectives" (Click to view - Note: there is a slight delay before the audio begins)

Pavel Chvykov - Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Date of Seminar: February 23, 2021

ABSTRACT: In this work we suggest a mechanism for self-organization of active matter, which we believe may be quite general. This mechanism is similar....SEE FULL ABSTRACT AND EVENT LISTING HERE

Complex Systems Annual Nobel Symposium December 10, 2020 - Listen to the talks:

Introduction and Chemistry Prize

Medicine Prize

Physics Prize

Economics

Literature Prize

Peace Prize

               Event listing and details of each talk.

Complex Systems Seminar Series Presents "Searching for the densest network that does not always synchronize" <----To View Click Here

Steven Strogatz, Applied Mathematics, Cornell University

Date of Seminar: Tuesday, November 17, 2020

Abstract: Consider a network of identical phase oscillators with sinusoidal coupling. How likely are the oscillators to globally synchronize, starting from random initial phases? One expects dense networks to have a strong tendency to synchronize and the basin of attraction .... SEE FULL EVENT LISTING HERE

Complex Systems Seminar Series Presents "Choice of Fitness Function Matters. Which One Do Salmon Use?"    <----To View Click Here

Carl P. Simon, Emeritus - UM Mathematics, Complex Systems and Ford School of Public Policy

Date of Seminar: Tuesday, November 10, 2020

Abstract: Life history theory focuses on characteristics of organisms, such as size and age at maturity or tradeoffs between egg number and egg size. It studies how such traits vary as evolutionary responses to natural selection that optimize fitness...SEE FULL EVENT LISTING HERE.

CSCS/MIDAS/MICDE Seminar | Predicting the second wave of COVID-19 in Washtenaw County, MI  <---To View Click Here

Marissa Renardy, UM Department of Microbiology & Immunology (Michigan Medicine)

Date of Seminar:  Tuesday, October 20, 2020

"In this work, we study and predict the spread of COVID-19 in Washtenaw County, MI through applying a discrete and stochastic network-based modeling framework. In this framework.....SEE FULL EVENT LISTING HERE