Student members

Joe Battikh is a senior sustainability expert with over sixteen years of international experience in the private sector. He has a strong interest in developing corporate sustainability through economic, environmental and social development.

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.

Nicholas Damer is currently completing his Masters of Arts in Political Science at Carleton University and recently discovered his passion for Complexity Science as a discipline which articulates his underlying discomfort with conventional positivistic interpretations of social phenomena. He is interested in applying computational modelling and/or GIS methods to solving problems around conflict, peace building, and institutional resilience.

Ileana I. Diaz is a PhD student in the Department of Geography and Environmental Management at the University of Waterloo. Broadly, her research interests lie in the intersections of sustainable food systems, feminist geopolitics, climate and environmental justice.

Kathyrn R. Fair is a PhD candidate in applied mathematics at the University of Waterloo, supervised by Professor Chris T. Bauch and Professor Madhur Anand. Prior to entering graduate school, she completed a BSc (Hons) in physical science with distinction at the University of Guelph.

Jorge is a PhD candidate of System Design Engineering at the University of Waterloo. His research activities are focused on applying agent-based models on three major areas

Robert Gooding-Townsend is a master’s student in mathematical biology working under the supervision of Chris Bauch and Madhur Anand. Prior to his graduate work, he completed concurrent Bachelors’ of Knowledge Integration and Applied Mathematics at the University of Waterloo. His primary research area is forest dynamics and models of land cover change.

Christopher Greyson-Gaito is a PhD student with Dr. Kevin McCann in the department of Integrative Biology at the University of Guelph. For his PhD, he is examining the interactions of ecological processes across scales in a variety of systems.

Chantal Lana Hutchison is a PhD student in Dr. Catherine Potvin’s neotropical ecology lab at McGill University. Her background is in theoretical physics with a Bachelor of Mathematics from the University of Waterloo and a MSc from the University of Waterloo and Perimeter Institute.

Scott is a PhD candidate in Global Governance at the Balsillie School of International Affairs, University of Waterloo, where he 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.

Kurniawan graduated from the inaugural Master of Climate Change program at the University of Waterloo and he is now working towards his PhD.

Michael Lawrence’s work applies concepts from the complexity science literature to the study of conflict and security. He focuses on the relationship between conflict, insecurity and development, particularly on the ways in which armed violence generates complex patterns of social organization.

Kirsten Lee is a PhD student in the School of Public Health and Health Systems at the University of Waterloo, working under the supervision of Dr. Sharon Kirkpatrick. Her 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.

Adrienne Mason is a Masters Candidate in the School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability at the University of Waterloo, supervised by Stephen Murphy.  Adrienne completed her Environmental Science degree at Trent University and worked as an ecologic

Nicholas Palaschuk is a PhD Candidate in the Sustainability Management program at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. Nicholas works in the fields of corporate sustainability, environmental behaviour, and sustainability transitions. Nicholas holds both a BSc. in Biology (2015) and MSc.

Jinelle Piereder is a PhD candidate in global governance at the Balsillie School of International Affairs (BSIA), specializing in conflict and security, and supervised by Dr. Thomas Homer-Dixon.

Perin Ruttonsha is a doctoral candidate with the School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability (SERS), at the University of Waterloo, and where she has worked in collaboration wit

Andjela Tatarovic enjoys learning and questioning the essence of things. Philosophy is a natural pass-time while quantifying ideas is more of a challenge, but enjoyed nonetheless. She likes learning the languages of things, and the relation between the abstract and the concrete.

Haotian Zhang is currently pursuing a PhD degree in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo. He received the MS degree in electrical engineering from the University of Waterloo, Canada, in 2012. His research interests are in the areas of network science and design of fault-tolerant algorithms.