Profiles

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. 

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.

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)

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).

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.