Core Members - University of Waterloo

Sean Geobey, Director of WICI, brings expertise in social innovation theory, sustainable finance, planning, governance, and decision-theory to his research and teaching. (On Sabbatical until April 30, 2026)

Dr. Chrystopher Nehaniv, Acting Director of WICI, is a professor with the Electrical and Computer Engineering and Systems Design Departments at the University of Waterloo.

He is an accomplished senior researcher in mathematics of discrete complex systems. His research interests include Intelligent Systems and Software, Modelling, Simulation and Systems Theory.

Chris Bauch is a professor of applied mathematics at the University of Waterloo. He studies epidemiological and environmental systems with a particular emphasis on evaluating interventions such as vaccines. He is particularly interested in coupling models of human behaviour with models of disease dynamics, ecological dynamics, or climate dynamics.  He also conducts research in data-driven dynamical systems approaches to tipping points. 

Trevor Charles is a professor of biology at the University of Waterloo. His work is in the areas of bacterial genetics and genome engineering, plant microbiome, and functional metagenomics, with an orientation towards Circular Bioeconomy applications.

Mark Crowley is an associate professor in the Pattern Recognition and Machine Intelligence group in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo.

Peter Deadman is an associate professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Waterloo. He received his PhD in 1997 from the School of Renewable Natural Resources at the University of Arizona, Tucson.

Igor Grossmann (@psywisdom) is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Waterloo, Canada, whose research focuses on the foundations of wise judgment in humans and machines, including how social and cognitive factors, moral reasoning, and emotions shape decision-making and behavior in changing cultural contexts.

Keith Hipel is university professor of systems design engineering at the University of Waterloo where he is co-ordinator of the conflict analysis group.

Dr. Maryam Mohiuddin Ahmed is the Director of the Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation and Resilience (WISIR) and an Assistant Professor (Teaching Stream) of Business at the University of Waterloo. A social innovation scholar-practitioner, her work foregrounds decolonial and relational approaches to entrepreneurship, finance, systems change, and knowledge co-creation. Her research and pedagogy center “dialogues of wisdoms” and plural ways of knowing, doing, and being to reimagine social innovation as a path toward more equitable, regenerative futures.

Dawn Parker is a Professor in the School of Planning, Faculty of Environment, University of Waterloo, Canada. She has been actively involved in the development of the Waterloo Institute for Complexity and Innovation, serving previously as Associate Director and Director, and most recently leading efforts to develop a Canadian Network for Complex Systems. 

Vanessa Schweizer is an Associate Professor in Knowledge Integration at the University of Waterloo. She applies approaches for understanding complex systems to socio-economic scenarios in the context of climate change. Vanessa was the Director of WICI from 2020-2023.