Events

New this term, University of Waterloo graduate students will discuss their complex systems work during a monthly seminar. Join us for a 20 minute talk, followed by a 20-minute discussion and feedback opportunity. Afterwards, everyone who is able is welcome to meet at the Graduate House for food and socializing from 6 p.m. onward. 

This month, Jude H. Kurniawan talks about 'Visualizing different perspectives of energy scenarios' on Thursday, May 16 from 4:30-5:30 in EV3 3401. We hope to see you there!

Speakers: David Robinson, Ivan Filion, and Kirsten Robinson

A major restoration project for Georgian Bay calls for re-imagining the ecosystems management strategy and its relationship to the local economy. The problem is complicated, and the solutions are contested. Is it an opportunity to apply complexity theory? This issue will be explored in this exciting and interactive WICI seminar.

Speaker: Mike Stone

Speakers: Eric Lambin, Peter Deadman, Raymond Cabrera, and Christophe Le Page

Speaker #1: Professor Eric Lambin of the University of Louvain and Stanford University discusses the mechanisms through which economic globalization increasingly drives land use change and uses case studies to illustrate the conditions under which local land use policies are effective in reducing conversion of natural ecosystems.

Professor Shreyas Sundaram of the University of Waterloo provides an overview of some recent approaches to analyzing the dynamics of information propagation in networks. He describes how tools from Markov chain theory, linear system theory, and structured system theory can be used to analyze global behaviour arising from a certain class of linear dynamics, and examine the effect of the network’s topology on its resilience to misbehaving agents.

Dr. Monica Cojocaru, associate professor of mathematics (University of Guelph), discusses her current research on the dynamic modelling approaches to population behaviour incorporating both objective and subjective decision factors. She presents a time-dependent extension of the standard, static model of consumer choice for differentiated products. Of central interest to her research is how consumers react to the introduction of a new product in the market.

Mark Hancock, assistant professor in the Department of Management Sciences (University of Waterloo), lectures on how people can start thinking of their bodies as an extension of the virtual world. He discusses studies that investigate human perception, and presents solutions that leverage people’s understanding of the physical world using examples such as an interactive table for sandtray therapy — a form of art therapy often used with children — and a technique for exploring 2D information as if it were on a virtual cloth.

Speaker: Katherine Larson

Speaker: Michael Beeler

Speaker: Joshua Armstrong