Profiles

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.

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. 

Anna Klinkova’s research is focused on developing efficient synthetic approaches to advanced nanomaterials for applications in alternative energy and catalysis.

Dr. Sami Houry leads Institutional Data Analysis at Athabasca University. He holds a BSc in physics from the University of Toronto (1997), an MBA from Memorial University of Newfoundland (2000), and a certified analytics and insights professional designation from CAIP Canada. In 2018, he earned his doctorate from Athabasca University.

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.

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.

Liane Gabora is a Professor of Psychology at the University of British Columbia. Her research focuses on how the creative process works, and the role of creativity and innovation in cultural evolution, using both experimental studies with humans and computational models.

Kirsten Wright moved to Waterloo to go to school for engineering. Her background is in robotics and embedded systems and more recently she has worked in social innovation. She is an author of the leading manual for Social Innovation Labs and has recently finished her PhD in Engineering, studying methods for measuring resilience in agent based models of social innovation. 

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. The overarching theme of her research is modelling disturbances in coupled human-environment systems.

Mark Hancock is an assistant professor at the University of Waterloo in the Department of Management Sciences and associate director of research training for the Games Institute.

Dr. Craig Janes is a medical anthropologist interested in and committed to social science approaches to public health and global health policy.

Pedram Fard is a PhD student in urban planning at University of Waterloo, Faculty of Environment. In his current research, Fard studies spatial and temporal patterns of land use changes induced by light rail transit development.

Derek Robinson is an assistant professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Management, University of Waterloo. His research interests lie at the center of land use, land management, and the carbon cycle.

Majid Mirza is pursuing his PhD in Sustainability Management at the University of Waterloo with a focus on financing the Sustainable Development Goals. He has over 10 years of international development and impact investing experience and is a consultant to the Canadian Government on development finance. 

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.

Monica Cojocaru is an associate professor in the mathematics and statistics Department at the University of Guelph. She completed her BSc and MSc in mathematics at the University of Bucharest (Romania) and her PhD in mathematics at Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada.

Gerrit Van Wyk completed an MPhil in the School of Engineering Management at the University of Cape Town in 1996, and an MBA at Henley Management College in 2000, and is currently practising as a specialist physician in Saskatchewan.

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)

Sharon Kirkpatrick, PhD, is a nutritionist and professor in the School of Public Health and Health Systems.

Hans De Sterck is an associate professor in the Department of Applied Mathematics at the University of Waterloo. His area of research is computational mathematics and scientific computing, with applications to problems in science, engineering and technology.

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.

Dear members of the Waterloo Institute for Complexity and Innovation,

Jan Wouter Vasbinder (1945) is founding president of the Institute Para Limes, which he initiated in 2003. In August 2011 he became director of the complexity program at the Nanyang Technological University at Singapore.

Clayton Dasilva is currently a PhD student in global governance at the Balsillie School of International Affairs, University of Waterloo, having also obtained his Master of Arts there in 2012.

Laurette Dubé holds the James McGill Chair of consumer and lifestyle psychology and marketing at the Desautels Faculty of Management of McGill University, and is the founding chair and scientific director of the McGill Centre for the Convergence of Health and Economics (MCCHE).

Francis Poulin

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).

Raja Sengupta's research projects follow three distinct but complementary paths that fall under the broad umbrella of GIScience: agent-based models, spatial tools to measure anthropogenic impacts, and methodological improvements to existing GIScience tools.  Within GIScience, the use of agent-based mo

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.

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

J. Doyne Farmer directs the programme on complexity economics, which is part of the INET@Oxford research institute. 

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.

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.

Dan McCarthy is a faculty member with Social Innovation Generation, Co-Director of the Waterloo Institute of Social Innovation and Resilience (WISIR), as well as an associate professor in the Faculty of Environment, University of Waterloo.

His research focuses on complexity, resilience, social innovation, and inner transformation. 

James Shelley Director, Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) Lab; Knowledge Mobilization Specialist, Faculty of Health Sciences, Western University

Christopher Luederitz is a PhD candidate at the Department of Geography and Environmental Management, where he researches on business-driven sustainability-oriented innovations in food systems. He is particularly interested in the role knowledge plays in the creation and use of sustainability innovations that have the ability to support transformations of entire food systems.

Madhur Anand is professor in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of Guelph. She is an internationally recognized ecologist with research interests ranging from theoretical to empirical studies of natural and human-induced changes in ecosystems at regional and global scales and their implications for sustainability.

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

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.

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. 

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.

Perin Ruttonsha is completing a PhD with the University of Waterloo’s School of Environment, Resources, and Sustainability (SERS), whereby she delineates a regenerative sustainability paradigm as one of balancing among multilayered, social-ecological systems complexities, from local to planetary scales.

John McLevey is an associate professor in knowledge integration at the University of Waterloo, with cross-appointments to sociology and legal studies, and environment and resource studies. He has a PhD (2013) in sociology from McMaster University.

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.

Carl Folke is science director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre and the director of the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, one of the collaborating partners of the Stockholm Resilience Centre.

Currently working as a researcher and data analyst at the Grenoble Ecole de Management in France, Kariappa Bheemaiah‘s previous experiences include working as a marine engineer, a French foreign legionnaire, and as a business professional.

Lesley Andrade, PhD Candidate, School of Health Sciences

Research interests: public health systems, healthy eating and nutrition policy, healthy weights promotions and eating disorders/disordered eating prevention, dietary assessment methods.

Examining the consumption of low-calorie sweeteners and applying an innovative method to estimating usual intake in Canada and abroad.

Christina Comeau is a PhD candidate in Social and Ecological Sustainability working under the supervision of Dr. Vanessa Schweiwer and Dr. Dan McCarthy.  She is working on trans disciplinary application of complexity science to designing and governing interventions in social and environmental systems that lead to a just and sustainable future.

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.

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.

Ajar Sharma is a Ph.D. student in Systems Design Engineering. He has a Masters in Water Management and background in hydrology and is currently working with Vanessa Schweiser (Knowledge Integration), and Keith Hipel (Systems Design Engineering). His research interests include climate change, water, Cross Impact Balances (CIB), conflict resolution, and sustainability. 

Milton Friesen’s work includes serving on the executive team of Cardus, a public policy think tank, in addition to pursuing a PhD at the University of Waterloo, School of Planning.

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).

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

Eihab Abdel-Rahman is associate professor of systems design engineering at the University of Waterloo. He specializes in the study of system dynamics and control with a particular interest in nonlinear systems. His current application areas are micro and nano electromechanical systems and energy harvesting systems.

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.

Steven J Mock is research director of the Ideological Conflict Project of the Balsillie School of International Affairs, Waterloo, Ontario. He completed his PhD in government at the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2009. He is a former chair of the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism (ASEN) and member of the editorial team of Nations and Nationalism.

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.

Ian Goldin took up his current position as director of the Oxford Martin School in September 2006. He has a BA (Hons) and a BSc from the University of Cape Town, an MSc from the London School of Economics, and an MA and doctorate from the University of Oxford.

Glenn Smith, P.Eng., is a University of Waterloo engineering graduate.

Dr. Lisa Aultman-Hall, PhD, is Professor and Chair of Systems Design Engineering at the University of Waterloo. 

Bruce MacVicar, Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, is interested in complex systems related to alluvial rivers where the form of the river is determined by a complex interplay between flow shear stress and turbulence, sediment transport, vegetation growth, and the development of bedforms like riff

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.

Julia Goyal is pursuing a Joint Interdisciplinary PhD at the University of Waterloo between the School of Public Health and Health Systems and Department of Mechatronics and Mechanical Engineering under the supervision of Dr. Ellen MacEachen and Dr. Arash Arami respectively.

Ileana I. Diaz is a PhD Candidate 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.

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.

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.

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 ecological restorationist creating and implementing

Sarah Burch, PhD is a Professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Management, University of Waterloo, Canada. Dr.

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.

Dr. Christopher Perlman is an associate professor in the School of Public Health and Health Systems at the University of Waterloo. His research focuses on understanding and improving the quality of healthcare for vulnerable health populations, particularly older adults and persons with mental health conditions.

Dr. Tejal Patel  is a Clinical Associate Professor and Schlegel Specialist in Medication Management and Aging with the Schlegel-UW Research Institute of Aging and Pharmacy Lead for the MINT Memory Clinics.

Matthew Hoffman is an associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto. He has a Bachelor of Science in environmental engineering from Michigan Technological University and a PhD in international relations from the George Washington University.

Kevin Yeung is fascinated with mobility and the way it shapes cities. He strives to improve the way people move whether it be by foot, bike, car, bus or train. Yeung completed his Master of Applied Science in civil engineering and planning at the University of Waterloo.

David Porreca is an Associate Professor and Chair in the Department of Classical Studies and the Co-Director of Medieval Studies Undergraduate Program, at University of Waterloo. David's research interests broadly involve Medieval intellectual history, especially the reception of the pagan Classical tradition in the Christian Middle Ages.

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.

Brenda Panasiak has been the part-time Adminstrative Coordinator at Waterloo Institute for Complexity and Innovation (WICI) since January, 2019. She has over 20 years of administrative experience with a background in not-for-profit, post-secondary education, and healthcare.  

Brenda has also been providing part-time Administrative support to the Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation and Resilience (WISIR) since 2021 and now also the Waterloo Centre for Microbial Research (WCMR).

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.

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

Fatemeh Jahanmiri is currently completing her PhD in urban planning at the University of Waterloo under the supervision of Dr. Dawn Parker. Given her background in architecture and her interest in nature-inspired design, she followed her research in the field of complexity exploring the origin of fractal patterns in cities.

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.

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.

Peter Carrington retired in 2019 as Professor of Sociology at the University of Waterloo, and is now Adjunct Professor in the Department of Sociology and Legal Studies.

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

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. Given his background in gravitational physics, Matteo would also like to know what dark matter stands for or what happens inside black holes.

Eric Lambin is a George and Setsuko Ishiyama provostial professor and senior fellow, Woods Institute for the Environment. He is affiliated with the Department of Environmental Earth System Science, Stanford University. He received his baccalaureate, master in sciences and PhD in sciences, from the University of Louvain, Belgium.

Mark Damm, Founder and CEO of FuseForward, has over twenty-five years of experience implementing and operating complex systems for critical infrastructure providers. As an experienced Systems Architect, Mark is passionate about technology for the utility sector.

He is a noted subject matter expert in the critical infrastructure field, regularly speaking and writing on asset management systems, cybersecurity and the industrial Internet of Things at industry and academic conferences. Mark is focused on using his experience to help critical infrastructure providers move towards a digital future, with expertise across cloud, intelligent systems, real-time analytics, cybersecurity, machine learning, streaming data, automation and much more.

Ryan Johnson is a PhD candidate in the Sustainability Management program with the School of Environment, Enterprise and Development. His research explores sustainability transitions and transformations by investigating the development of sustainability reporting frameworks for agriculture, including the specific metrics they include, and their underlying paradigms and philosophies. Curiosity and eclecticism have also inspired Ryan to undertake transdisciplinary research and consulting work in a diversity of other areas, including economic and community development, climate change mitigation and adaption, and nature-based solutions planning.

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.

Peter Jentsch is a PhD candidate in the Department Of Applied Mathematics at the University of Waterloo. Supervised by Dr. Chris T. Bauch and Dr. Madhur Anand, his research is primarily in the field of mathematical ecology and human-environment systems. 

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).

Thomas Homer-Dixon, WICI founding director, is now the Executive Director of the Cascade Institute at Royal Roads University, and Professor Emeritus in the Faculty of Environment at the University of Waterloo, in Waterloo, Canada.

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.

W. Brian Arthur is an external faculty member at the Santa Fe Institute (SFI) and visiting researcher in the Intelligent Systems Lab at PARC (formerly Xerox Parc). He holds a PhD from Berkeley in operations research, and has other degrees in economics, engineering and mathematics.

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.

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.

Neil Craik, PhD,  is an associate professor in the School of Environment, Enterprise and Development (SEED)at the University of Waterloo, where he teaches and researches in the fields of Canadian and international environmental law.

Professor Casello’s interests lie in urban transportation systems and their impacts on healthy and economically viable urban areas. As such, he conducts research on the design and operation of public transportation systems, urban roadway systems, and facilities for non-motorized modes.

Sarah Tolmie, a Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Waterloo, is a traditionally-trained, philologically-oriented medievalist with a master's degree from the University of Toronto and a PhD from the University of Cambridge. Her research interests are in historiography, visionary poetry and embodiment. She has published articles on Middle English and Scots literature, as well as on Langland's Piers Plowman. 

Paul Fieguth is Professor and Department Chair in Systems Design Engineering, and a co-director of the Vision and Imaging Processing (VIP) Lab at the University of Waterloo.

Jukka-Pekka Onnela is a professor at the Department of Biostatistics, Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard University.

Katharine Zywert is a PhD student in the School of Environment, Resources, and Sustainability at the University of Waterloo, where she studies medicine in the Anthropocene.

David Edwards, CEO of Purpose Built Communities, is interested in how complexity science can be applied to redefine how the problem of intergenerational urban poverty is addressed in our cities. Distressed urban neighborhoods are complex adaptive systems out which emerge the outcomes that we worry about: high crime, under performing schools, health disparities, and low levels of economic mobility. Through an improved understanding how these “neighborhood effects” generate these outcomes, we can perhaps design more effective interventions.

Mr. Edwards is  looking to partner with academics, private sector leaders and other community development practitioners interested in applying complexity science to deepen our understanding of the relationship between neighborhood conditions and improved social outcomes.

Shahab Valaei Sharif is a current Ph.D. student in Urban Planning at the University of Waterloo under the supervision of Dr. Dawn Parker. He holds a master’s degree in Civil Engineering with a major in Construction Engineering and Management from the Sharif University of Technology (2021). He is interested in interdisciplinary research in areas such as land and housing markets, urban infrastructure systems, and healthy cities.

In his previous research projects, he has used simulation and modelling techniques to develop policy analysis tools evaluating the effectiveness of community response and mitigation policies in the face of crises, such as natural disasters and pandemics. His current research mainly focuses on the application of system thinking techniques to solve longer-term urban problems with the final goal of increasing the resilience of cities.

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. 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.

Jeremy Pittman is an Associate Professor in the School of Planning, whose research interests include: environmental policy and governance in the Anthropocene, landscape- and seascape-scale approaches to planning, human communities in an interconnected world and social-ecological connectivity.

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. 

John Lang is currently completing a PhD in applied mathematics at the University of Waterloo under the supervision of Dr. Hans De Sterck. His work entails studying how mathematical modelling of human interaction and decision making over social networks might provide insight into the development and evolution of social movements like the Arab Spring.

Rob Axtell is a Professor of Computational Social Science at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, U.S.A. Previously, he was a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution (Washington, D.C., U.S.A.) and a founding member of the Center on Social and Economic Dynamics there. He holds an interdisciplinary PhD from Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, USA).

William Sutherland, MD, is a general practice physician presently working in emergency medicine, general practice psychotherapy, and functional medicine. He is the innovator of the complexity medicine paradigm and the author of the upcoming book on the subject, Grand Rounds: Healing Wisdom for a Complex World.

Owen Gallupe is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Legal Studies at the University of Waterloo. His research mostly focuses on criminological theory testing, social influence dynamics, decision-making processes, and politics and crime.

Thesis

Tran, Jinny
Understanding developer’s decision making in the Region of Waterloo
School of Planning, University of Waterloo undergraduate thesis, 2017.

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. Drawing on complexity approaches and tools such as Cognitive-Affective Mapping (CAM) and network theory, Jinelle researches the contents, causes, and effects of ideological conflict within global governance and policymaking.

Felix Reed-Tsochas is James Martin lecturer in complex systems at the Saïd Business School, director of the Oxford Martin Programme on Complexity, and a fellow of Green Templeton College.

Yu Huang is currently completing her PhD degree in urban planning at the School of Planning, University of Waterloo. Her research focuses on the complex interactions within the urban housing market system and the emergent urban patterns and market dynamics.

Kirsten Moy is a Senior Fellow with the Aspen Institute. Her most recent research initiative, conducted for the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco as a Visiting Scholar, focuses on the application of complexity science to community development.

Marek Stastna, Professor of Applied Mathematics is an applied mathematician by training (PhD, Waterloo 2001).  His applied mathematics interests are rooted in the descriptions of nonlinear waves, whether analytical (perturbation theory, variational methods) or numerical.  His post PhD career has covered a broad range of application topics, with coastal oceans and large lakes the primary focus.  He has made occasional forays into climate modeling, hydrology and other porous media problems.  He enjoys developing numerical models, and has been involved in large, MPI based models, GPU based models as well as data analysis methods meant for a non-technical audience. 

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.

Kerstin Dautenhahn is a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo. She is a Canada 150 Research Chair in Intelligent Robotics and is cross-appointed to the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science, the Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering, and the Department of Systems Design Engineering at University of Waterloo. She is Visiting Professor at the University of Hertfordshire, UK. At Waterloo she is the Director of the Social and Intelligent Robotics Research Laboratory (SIRRL).

Robert M. Cutler is an energy consultant, political anyalyst, communications strategist and organizational designer. Beyond the theory of complex systems, his applications of complex-systems anaysis include international energy geo-economics and organizational resilience and antifragility, emphasizing evolutionary perspectives.

Stephen Quilley is an Associate Professor of social and environmental innovation in the Department of Environment and Resource Studies in the Faculty of Environment at the University of Waterloo.

Dr. Michael Lawrence (he/his/him) is a Research Fellow on the Polycrisis program at the Cascade Institute (Royal Roads University, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada) where he examines the causal mechanisms of crisis interactions across such global systems as governance, energy, food, economy, climate, ecology, and international security. He also developed the website Polycrisis.org, leads the Cascade Institute’s production of pedagogical tools on complex systems thinking, and serves as Section Editor for the special edition “Polycrisis in the Anthropocene” of the journal Global Sustainability.

Yaneer Bar-Yam is founding president of the New England Complex Systems Institute and co-founder of the World Health Network. A complexity physicist, he received his SB and PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology [MIT] in 1978 and 1984, respectively. He is the author of Dynamics of Complex Systems and Making Things Work, and has focused in recent years on developing responses to global crises.

Warren Dodd's research uses an interdisciplinary and mixed methods approach with the aim of understanding and addressing the social and ecological determinants of global health and development.

Xinyue Pi is a MES (environmental studies) student at the School of Planning, Faculty of Environment, University of Waterloo. Her work focuses on modelling the rental market using hedonic pricing methods.

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

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.

Marten Scheffer currently leads the aquatic ecology and water quality management group at Wageningen University. He is interested in unraveling the mechanisms that determine the stability and resilience of complex systems.

Robert holds a Bachelor of Environmental Studies and a Master of Arts in Planning from the University of Waterloo. During his time at Waterloo, he developed the residential valuation sub-model for a regional land-market transportation microsimulation project.

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.

David Porreca, Associate Professor and Chair of Classical Studies, and Co-Director of Medieval Studies at University of Waterloo, researches Medieval intellectual history, especially the pagan Classical tradition in the Christian Middle Ages. In addition, he has become interested in ancient and Medieval magic, astrology, alchemy, palaeography, manuscript transmission and glosses, and produced a new English translated the Latin astral magic text known as Picatrix in 2019. In parallel to his interest in intellectual history, he has begun examining the dynamics of the rise, flourishing and downfall of complex societies, such as ancient Roman civilization, especially with regard to the impact of resource depletion on these processes. David joined WICI's Steering Committee in 2022.

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.

Ponnu Kumaraswamy Ponnambalam is a Professor in the Department of Systems Design Engineering at the University of Waterloo.

He has previously worked at several academic institutions including the College of Engineering in Guindy, Madras, India; the University of Toronto, the University of Ottawa and the Technical University of Delft in the Netherlands. In the past, Professor Ponnambalam has been the Associate Chair of Graduate Studies in the Systems Design Engineering department at University of Waterloo.

Mary I. O'Connor is an Associate Professor in the Zoology Department and Associate Director of the Biodiversity Research Centre at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. O'Connor is a leader in metabolic ecology research, using experiments, data synthesis and theoretical models to understand change in aquatic ecosystems, including causes and consequences of biodiversity change and climate change impacts.

Paul Thagard is a philosopher, cognitive scientist, and author of many interdisciplinary books. He is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Waterloo, where he founded and directed the Cognitive Science Program. He is a graduate of the Universities of Saskatchewan, Cambridge, Toronto (PhD in philosophy) and Michigan (MS in computer science). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the Cognitive Science Society, and the Association for Psychological Science.

Katherine Laycock is currently enrolled in PhD studies at the University of Waterloo, School of Planning.

Mike Batty CBE FRS FBA is Bartlett Professor of Planning at University College London where he is Chair of the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA). He has worked on computer models of cities and their visualisation and has published several books, such as Cities and Complexity (2005), The New Science of Cities (2013), Inventing Future Cities (2018), and The Computable City (2024) (all MIT Press).

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.

Luis Ricardez-Sandoval is a Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Canada Research Chair in Multiscale Modelling and Process Systems. Dr. Ricardez-Sandoval's current research interests are focused on the development and application of novel optimization tools for various emerging applications including multiscale systems.

Ed Jernigan is a professor and former chair of the Department of Systems Design Engineering at the University of Waterloo. He joined Waterloo in 1976 after completing his Bachelor of Science, Master of Science, and PhD degrees from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Jessica Blythe is a SSHRC postdoctoral fellow and adjunct Associate Professor in the School of Environment, Resources, and Sustainability at the University of Waterloo.  Trained broadly as a sustainability scientists, Jessica applies a social-ecological lens to explore how coastal communities experience environmental change, and what explains their different

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Frances Westley is JW McConnell Chair in Social Innovation at University of Waterloo, where she heads up Social Innovation Generation (SiG), a national initiative designed to build capacity for social innovation in Canada.

Jamie is a leader and award-winning specialist in Biomimicry and Regenerative Design, the first Director of Biomimicry at B+H  and first Global Director of Regenerative Design for the SJ Group of Companies. His role represents a pioneering shift in our industry, one that works with nature, rather than against it.

Eric Beinhocker is the executive director of the Institute for New Economic Thinking’s INET@Oxford research program (Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford), a member of the Said Business School at Oxford, and a visiting professor of economics at Central European University.

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.

Rebecca Saari is a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Global Change, Atmosphere, and Health, and an Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Waterloo. Her research advances the field of health impact assessment by using coupled human-natural systems (CHANS) models to identify policies – for mitigation and adaptation – that robustly and equitably protect health from air pollution under a changing climate. 

Xiongbing Jin is interested in the complexity arising from the interactions among urban land use, transportation infrastructure and individual choices and preferences. During his postdoc at the School of Planning, Faculty of Environment, University of Waterloo, Jin was the lead developer of the agent-based Waterloo Regional Model (WARM) which aims to simulate the relationships among residential location choices, trip decisions and landscape management, and the influences of urban infrastructure and policies on these decisions. He was also a lead developer of the Digging into Data (DiD) project MIRACLE (Mining the relationships among variables in large datasets from complex systems) which aims to provide a data analysis, visualization and management platform for the big data generated by agent-based models (ABMs). He received his PhD in 2010 from Memorial University of Newfoundland.

I will be studying the relationship between urban economic structure and trajectory and the success of a Light Rail Transit (LRT) system in major North American cities. To support this analysis, we will gather and analyze the following information for North American cities that have implemented light rail transit:

Megan Bean works in adult education, primarily in teaching English as a second or other language. She received her undergraduate degree in English literature from the University of St. Andrews, Scotland; a postgraduate diploma in education from the University of College Cork, Ireland; and a master's in education from the Open University, England.

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.

Leigh Tesfatsion Leigh Tesfatsion received the Ph.D. degree in economics from the University of Minnesota, Mpls., in 1975, with a minor in mathematics. Currently she is Professor Emerita of Economics and Courtesy Research Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering at Iowa State University.

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.

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 

Chris Longley is a graduate student in applied philosophy and theoretical neuroscience. He is interested in the science and ethics of neuroprediction, as well as emerging technologies more broadly.

Academic Disciplines: Philosophy, Neuroscience, Artificial Intelligence

Application Areas: Psychology, Healthcare, Criminal Justice

Roger White is Honorary Research Professor in the Department of Geography, Memorial University of Newfoundland, and since 2007 has also been affiliated with the Flemish Institute for Technological Research (VITO) in Mol, Belgium.

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.

Zoya Abbasi is a PhD candidate in Applied Mathematics at the University of Waterloo. Her research focuses on the control and eradication of epidemic diseases using multi-agent systems and complex network theory, with particular emphasis on multilayer models that integrate human mobility, waterborne transmission, and resource constraints. She develops distributed protocols to enable coordinated, time-critical public-health interventions in heterogeneous urban–environmental networks.

Ainsley Archer's research interests are in the application of information and knowledge to facilitate decision-making.  He has applied these interests mainly in the domain of agriculture and ecological systems.  He has a PhD from McGill University in Information Systems and Decision Support Tools in Animal Breeding and a M.Sc. in Animal Breeding and Genetics. He has over 10 years of research experience in agricultural and ecological systems modelling and decision support tools development. This included stints in Australia with the Commonwealth Science and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) using complex systems models to create decision support tools for agricultural value chains and sustainable resource use in Northern Queensland and the Great Barrier Reef Region.  Before returning to Canada, he spent a year as Research Director at the Ministry of Agriculture in Jamaica.

He currently works for the Ontario government in various roles as a champion for the application of information and performance measurement frameworks as effective information system tools.  Currently, he works in the Farm Finance Branch, where he supports Business Risk Management programs and policies.  He has been implementing the Ministry’s BRM performance measurement framework and seeks to use this platform for innovation in the policy decision-making space. 

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

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. 

Rodrigo Costa is an Assistant Professor in Systems Design Engineering at the University of Waterloo, whose research employs computational simulations to investigate how communities’ physical, economic, and social systems interact and exacerbate disaster risk and inequalities.  He uses agent-based simulations to help decision-makers better understand and address post-disaster unmet needs. Costa’s work has been recognized with the 2021 Best Graduate Paper Award by the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute for his paper titled ‘Agent-based Model for Post-earthquake Housing Recovery’ and is a co-PI in the Center of Excellence for Equitable and Climate Resilient Housing funded by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Jörn Davidsen is a Professor in the Department of Physics & Astronomy and a member of the Complexity Science Group as well as the Hotchkiss Brain Institute at the University of Calgary, leading the Computational Neuroscience Platform under the University of Calgary’s Brain and Mental Health Strategy. With a PhD in Theoretical Physics from the University of Kiel, Germany, he has worked on applications ranging from neurosciences to earthquakes, from the climate system to nonlinear chemical reaction kinetics (with Nobel laureate Gerhardt Ertl’s group, for example), using tools from statistical physics, network science and nonlinear dynamics. Dr. Davidsen is a Humboldt Research Fellow at the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam, Germany and was elected Secretary of the Nonlinear Geophysics Focus Group of the American Geophysical Union in 2015 and in 2017.

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. 

Margo Henning is a candidate for a Master of Climate Change at the University of Waterloo. She holds a BA in General Studies, and Post-Baccalaureates in Community Economic Development, Business Administration, and Education. 

Jim Jones, PhD Candidate, Social and Ecological Sustainability

The role of narratives in transitions towards sustainability through a social-ecological systems lens; the role of narrative as a tool to understand and work with complexity and 'wicked problems'. The tensions that arise at different spatial and temporal scales in the nexus of land, energy, technology, food and culture. 

Ecological economics, systems thinking and complexity, participatory governance, food systems, sustainability transitions, participatory narrative inquiry, soft systems, complexity intervention

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.

Kwabena is a postdoctoral fellow working with Professor Dawn Parker in the School of Planning. Prior to joining University of  Waterloo he completed a postdoctoral position at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS-Senegal) - a Pan-African center of excellence for post-graduate training, research, and public engagement in mathematics.

Keywords: applied mathematics, climate/environmental science, computational sustainability, sustainability, climate change, human behaviour, agent-based modeling, systems modeling and simulation, mathematical modeling and analysis of complex social-ecological systems.

Stephany Peterson is a PhD candidate in Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of New Brunswick. Her research investigates how knowledge behaves under complexity and develops a diagnostic systems framework to support ignition, responsiveness, and decision-making in live systems. 

Alex Petric is a PhD Candidate in Urban Planning at the University of Waterloo, working under the supervision of Dr. Dawn Parker. His previous work includes master’s degrees in Rural Planning & Development (2019) and Applied Mathematics (2016). Prior to his Ph.D. studies, Alex worked in rural research, data analysis, and consultancy positions.

Alex’s research explores how urban environments affect social capital, which refers to the density and quality of social connections and the benefits that flow from them. His studies focus on missing middle housing (higher-density low-rise developments) and their potential community benefits. Alex's work uses agent-based modelling alongside in-field research to study how housing type, housing mix, and social infrastructure affect social capital formation, with an aim to help planning practice to support social capital formation and reduce social isolation among urban residents. Alongside this research, Alex has worked as a Research Assistant for the SSHRC-funded study “Why did the Missing Middle miss the train?” and was part of a team that reached the national semi-finals for the 2022 Map the System competition.

Taylor Roth is an MASc candidate in Chemical Engineering at the University of Waterloo, working under the supervision of Dr. Luis Ricardez-Sandova whose research focuses on using various optimization techniques and computational modelling to improve the sustainability and efficiency of complex chemical engineering systems through process intensification.

Natalya Siddhantakar is a PhD Candidate in Sustainability Management at the School of Environment, Enterprise, and Development, working under the supervision of Dr. Vanessa Schweizer. Her research interests include just and equitable transition to sustainable low-carbon economic practices, systems thinking, sustainability accounting, and cross-impact balances (CIB) analysis.

Dr. Abel Torres-Espin is an Assistant Professor of Health Data Science in the School of Public Health Sciences at University of Waterloo. His research expands the cross-section between health and biomedicine with data science.

With a background in biology, neuroscience, bioinformatics and biostatistics, Abel is interested in conceptualizing and modeling health as a complex system and using systems thinking, knowledge integration, and machine learning approaches to understand and model such complexity.

His research has focused on the health context of complex heterogeneous populations such as spinal cord injury, traumatic brain injury, dementia and chronic low back pain, resulting in tremendous individual and societal costs. He is also interested in analytical and computational methods, multivariate statistics, the reproducibility and replicability of research and real-world evidence.

Alex Tveit (CA) is a systems-focused leader advancing community empowerment and inclusive innovation. He is the Co-Founder and CEO of the Sustainable Impact Foundation, Emerging Technology Fellow at Community Foundations of Canada, and serves on boards spanning climate, democratic deliberation, healthcare, and other impact areas. His work integrates systems thinking with community-centered approaches, addressing complex challenges through collaboration and knowledge sharing. With a strong focus on shifting power dynamics and ensuring technology contributes positively to society, Alex champions equity-driven innovation and partnerships that foster resilience and systemic change.

Systems Weaver · Knowledge-Mobilization Architect · Tech Steward & Capital-Flows Strategist

Kwaku Owusu Twum is a sustainability management PhD candidate with almost a decade of multidisciplinary research experience at the intersection of digital innovation, spatial planning, climate resilience, and sustainable food systems.

Emily Voigt is a Master’s student in Sustainability Management working under the supervision of Dr. Simron Singh and Dr. Kumaraswamy Ponnambalam. 

Jangho Yang is an Assistant Professor of Management Science and Engineering at the University of Waterloo. Before joining the University of Waterloo, he completed his Ph.D. at the New School for Social Research and then undertook a postdoctoral research position at the University of Oxford. His research focuses on information-theoretic approaches, power-law behavior, firm-level productivity and investment, and Bayesian multilevel modeling. In particular, he specializes in applying complex system frameworks, such as maximum entropy modeling and power law modeling, to economic data on technological change.