Affiliate researchers – External

Chloe Clifford Astbury is a post-doctoral fellow in the School of Global Health at York University in Toronto. Chloe’s research around complex systems has focused on the prevention of communicable and non-communicable disease, with a focus on the food system as a complex system from which health outcomes emerge. Her current projects involve applying complex system methods to understanding how the food system drives the emergence of antimicrobial resistance and emerging infectious diseases, and how policies to reduce the risk of disease emergence intersect with the food system. Chloe also led the development of guidance on using systems approaches in non-communicable disease prevention policy on behalf of the World Health Organization and is interested in complexity training and teaching.

Brad Bass is a researcher and senior policy analyst with the Indigenous Affairs Directorate in Employment and Social Development Canada.

Marisa Beck specializies in global environmental governance. Her research focuses on the interactions between three types of complex systems — the Earth’s climate, the global economy and social value and belief systems.

Teresa Branch-Smith approaches complexity from a background in biochemistry and as a result is particularly interested in discussions about emergence that involve biology based examples. This can range from the study of protein interaction to the swarming behaviour of bees.

Ronald B. Brown received his PhD in Public Health Sciences from University of Waterloo in 2024. He studies the human body as a complex system of organ systems, believing that the key to disease and illness prevention is through understanding how this complex system works. He is focusing on interdisciplinary health research for chronic diseases and novel interdisciplinary research methods.

He wishes to continue scholarly research in the disciplines of public health, nutritional epidemiology, and risk analysis of clinical trials. 

Thomas Bury is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Faculty of Medicine at McGill University. He completed his PhD in Applied Mathematics at the University of Waterloo, and previously, he completed the Mathematical Tripos at the University Cambridge with first class honours, specializing in applications to biological and theoretical physics. Thomas is currently developing methods to better predict and classify cardiac arrhythmia.

Eric De Guili is an Assistant Professor of Physics at the Toronto Metropolitan University, interested in emergence and self-organization in complex systems. His group is currently studying the origin of metabolism in chemical reaction networks, learning of syntax in human languages, and the plasticity of amorphous solids. 

Truzaar Dordi is a lecturer in Sustainability Management at the University of York, UK – working in the fields of climate finance, energy policy, and sustainability transitions. His research uncovers the interconnected and complementary roles industry, policy, and capital markets play in contributing to both climate instability and solutions to climate change.

Yue Dou, Assistant Professor, Natural Resource Department, ITC-Faculty of Geo-information Science and Earth Observation, University of Twente, the Netherlands

BA (political science), Virginia Commonwealth University, 2002; PhD (political science), University of Toronto, 2013. Dr. Flanik is an assistant professor of political science at Colorado Mesa University, where he teaches a broad range of courses in international relations, comparative politics, technology studies, and peace and conflict studies. His research and teaching interests are in U.S.

Diana searches for nutritional interventions addressing the complexity of malnutrition. In particular, she investigates the extent to which agroecology can improve nutrition in the long-term, through diversifying dietary intake and maintaining soil health.

Scott Heckbert is an environmental economist at Alberta Innovates Technology Futures, Canada. Scott’s research applies environmental economics using simulation modelling of social-ecological systems.

Scott  studies the role of deep uncertainty in political decision-making. His research investigates the intersection of science and policy in the areas of climate change, infectious disease outbreaks, and artificial intelligence. Scott's dissertation research focuses on the role played by mathematical models as decision-support tools in the governance of catastrophic threats.

Ilias Kotsireas received his undergraduate education at the University of Athens (Greece) and the Universite Paris 6 (France). He earned his PhD from the Universite Paris 6 in 1998 holding a three-year scholarship from the Ministry of National Education.

Kurniawan graduated from the inaugural Master of Climate Change program at the University of Waterloo and he is now working towards his PhD. For his doctoral research, Kurniawan is seeking to advance the methodological approach for better anticipating hard-to-foresee scenarios for complex social systems.

Professor Anna Lawniczak teaches Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Guelph. 

Kirsten's  research focuses on assessing the effect of consumer food environment interventions (e.g. menu labelling) on food/beverage purchases and intakes, as well as evaluating post-secondary food environments.

Jon Mackay is currenty a lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Business Analytics at the University of Auckland. His research interests involve network theory, corporate governance, and business analytics more broadly. 

Hassan Masum is a policy and technology strategist, and Vice President of Data Science at Prodigy which aims to help everyone love learning. He was a team leader in the Ethical, Social, and Cultural Program for the international Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative, and has worked as an engineer, scientist, foresight specialist, consultant, and global health innovator.

Anthony Masys is a defence scientist for the Department of National Defence, Defence Research and Development Canada, Centre for Security Science. Assigned as scientific advisor to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Major Events and Protective Policing Division, Dr. Masys supported both the Vancouver 2010 Olympics and G8/G20 summits.

Dr. Sergey Melnik is a research fellow at the Mathematics Applications Consortium for Science and Industry (www.MACSI.ul.ie), Department of Mathematics & Statistics, University of Limerick, Ireland.

Matto Mildenberger is an assistant professor of political science at the University of California Santa Barbara. His research focuses on comparative climate policy and dynamics of public climate and energy opinions.

Manjana Milkoreit is a post-doctoral research fellow with the Walton Sustainability Solutions Initiative at ASU’s Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability. Her research focuses on the role of cognition in climate change politics, and more generally the way cognitive processes such as imagination or scientific knowledge impact the search for and implementation of solutions to climate change.

Dr. David A. Petrie, MD, FRCP is a Professor and the head of the Dalhousie Department of Emergency Medicine and the chief of the Central Zone, NSHA. After medical school at Dalhousie and an internship in Ottawa he worked for two years in small towns in Ontario and Nova Scotia.

Samuel Petrie is a Health Outcomes Scientist at Nova Scotia Health and adjunct professor at Dalhousie University. Originally from Halifax, he completed his BKI at the University of Waterloo in 2016, and his PhD in Health Sciences at Carleton University in 2022.

Dr. Simone Philpot is a Fellow at the Cascade Institute where she combines systems modeling with qualitative research to enhance foresight and strategic decision-making 

Stephen James Purdey is an international relations specialist (PhD University of Toronto). His academic work focuses on the evolution of new forms of global governance to meet current socio-ecological challenges. Publications include Economic Growth, the Environment and International Relations: The Growth Paradigm (Routledge 2010) and The Normative Root of the Climate Change Problem (Ethics and the Environment 2012).

Amanda Raffoul is a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) postdoctoral fellow with STRIPED, the Strategic Training Initative for the Prevention of Eating Disorders, based at Boston Children's Hospital and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Amanda received her MSc and PhD from the School of Public Health and Health Systems at the University of Waterloo.

Dr. Rob Robson, MDCM, MSc, FRCP(C) is the principal advisor for healthcare system safety and accountability in Canada and recently served as the chief patient safety officer at the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority for six years.

Sergio Rossi is a professor in the Département des Sciences Fondamentales, Université du Québec à Chicoutimi (Canada). Before joining Chicoutimi in 2007, he obtained a master's in forest and environmental sciences and a PhD in forest ecology at the Università di Padova (Italy).

Dr. Naresh Singh is a Professor in the Jindal School for Government and Public Policy and Director of the Centre for Complexity Economics, Applied Spirituality and Public Policy at O.P. Jindal Global University;  Special Adviser on Sustainability at the Toronto Centre for Financial Leadership,  and Senior VP at Global Development Solutions Canada, a strategic advisory services firm.

Matteo Smerlak studies the emergence of pattern in complex dynamical systems, most recently within the context of Darwinian evolution. His recent work has also explored the dynamics of economic inequalities, the quantification of resilience and the origin of scaling in biological growth.

Lee Smolin is a founding member and research physicist at the Perimeter Institute For Theoretical Physics.

Robert Spekkens is a theoretical physicist who works on the foundations of quantum theory. He attended McGill University, pursuing a joint program in physics and philosophy and then completed an MSc and a PhD in theoretical physics at the University of Toronto.

Leah Stokes is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). She completed her PhD in public policy in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning Environmental Policy & Planning group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She also received a masters from MIT’s political science department.

Shreyas Sundaram is an assistant professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University. He received his MS and PhD degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2005 and 2009, respectively.

Isaac Tamblyn is an assistant professor of physics at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT) and holds a joint appointment with the National Research Council of Canada.

Mohamed A. Tawhid got his PhD in applied mathematics from the University of Maryland Baltimore County, Maryland, U.S.A. From 2000 to 2002, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Faculty of Management, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Currently, he is a full professor at Thompson Rivers University, B.C. Canada.

Edward W. Thommes is a health outcomes manager at GlaxoSmithKline Canada. In addition, he is an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Guelph researching multidisciplinary computational modelling under a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada [NSCERC] Discovery Grant.

Dr. Ola Tjornbo is Assistant Professor in the Department of Applied Human Sciences, at University of Concordia, and the Principal for Archipelago Consultants. Ola has a PhD in Global Governance from the Balsillie School of International Affairs looking at the role of social media networks in governance.

Tara Vinodrai is an associate professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Toronto.

John Whalley is a William G. Davis Chair in International Trade and professor of economics at the University of Western Ontario, and a distinguished fellow at CIGI. Professor Whalley received his PhD from Yale University (1973). In addition to his roles at CIGI and the University of Western Ontario, Dr.

Reza Yousefi-Nooraie's main line of interest includes the application of a social network analysis lens to inform and promote the process of knowledge translation and program implementation (https://goo.gl/EIrwfo).

Haotian Zhang  research interests are in the areas of network science and design of fault-tolerant algorithms.