Meeting to be held at Westin Alexandria, Alexandria, VA
Meeting Summary: This workshop, “Convergent Paths towards Universality in Complex Systems,” is co-sponsored by the Santa Fe Institute and the National Science Foundation and is being held in Alexandria, Virginia. It will bring together scientists from very diverse disciplinary backgrounds, including psychologists, physicists, ecologists, biologists, computer scientists, mathematicians, information theorists, and others to articulate a convergence approach to explore the recent discovery of universal or near-universal properties of complex systems. The two-day workshop will address universality in five primary areas: Information Processing and Collective Computation, Adaptive Dynamics, Neural Systems, Interactions and Energetics, and Scaling.
The proposed workshop will contribute new perspectives on universality and will be an important and necessary step in the identification of further research necessary for discovery in these converging fields. The workshop will bring together research leaders across diverse disciplines for intensive discussions aimed at exploration of common mechanisms underlying a range of features of complex systems. The meeting will identify tools, models and theories that extend beyond the boundaries of single disciplines, and thereby provide significant improvements through novel approaches, to progress within any given field