Reverse Engineering Complexity
Abstract: My group’s research investigates robustness, tradeoffs, and feedback in complex, highly connected systems, and develops computational multiscale models to capture important small-scale interactions and predict large-scale behavior.
My group combines development of mechanistic models with data driven techniques to address multidisciplinary research challenges, including dynamics of earthquake faults, wildfire propagation and disaster response, biomaterials, infectious disease, microbiome, network neuroscience, and group decision making under stress.
This colloquium provides an overview of my group’s approach to complex systems research, focusing on dynamics, architecture, robustness tradeoffs, and adaptation. I draw on recent and historical examples from my group and experiences at the Santa Fe Institute, especially emphasizing earthquakes, forest fires, adaptive immunity, and bones.