Complex Systems Speaker and Seminar Series

Since mid 90's the Complex Systems faculty group at University of Alaska Anchorage hosted a speaker series as well as a biennial conference called Emergence In Chemical Systems. From 2012-2015 had the privilege of contributing to the group's effort to bring the field of complex systems and system science to Alaska through organizing the group's aforementioned activities. Follow the links to watch selected videos from the past complex systems speaker series. (I hope to post the archived talks of complexity scientists the group hosted in the past that include notable scientists such as: Luise Bettencourt, John Holland, Vernon Smith, Stephanie Forrest, etc).

February 5, 2015: Dr. Daniel Kammen, Director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory. UC Berkeley. The System is the Solution: Energy Options for the 21st Century

February 6, 2015: Dr. Daniel Kammen, Director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory. UC Berkeley. A Systems Science for Sustainable Energy

February 13, 2015: Dr. Sarah Wandersee, Biology Department, UAA / Anderson Geographics & Consulting. Landscape values mapping from start to finish: An applied perspective from an Alaska EPSCoR test case on the Kenai Peninsula

February 20, 2015: Dr. Meagan B. Krupa, Biology Department, UAA / APU. Stakeholder Analysis of the Kenai River Fishery: who's who in the race for fish.

February 27, 2015: Dr. Donald M. “Matt” Reeves, Department of Geological Sciences, UAA. Assessment of Potential Climate Change Impacts on Basin-Scale Water Resources:A Case Study from Martis Valley, CA

March 27, 2015: Dr. Mark Faller, APU Philosophy. The Four Demons of Causal Memory and the Taming of the Second Law.

April 2, 2015: Dr. Raissa D’Souza, Complexity Sciences Center, UC-Davis. The Science of Networks: Modeling our complex, interdependent world

April 3, 2015: Dr. Raissa D’Souza, Complexity Sciences Center, UC-Davis. Percolation, cascades and control of interdependent networks

April 10, 2015: Dr. Martin Cenek & Spencer Dahl, Computer Science and Engineering, UAA. Making sense of our lives: A computational approach to understanding multiagent simulations.

April 16, 2015: Dr. Paul Kockelman, Professor of Linguistic Anthropology, Yale University. The Work of Interpretation in the Age of Computation

April 17, 2015: Dr. Paul Kockelman, Professor of Linguistic Anthropology, Yale University. Entropy & Ontology: Two Encounters with Time, Media, and Materiality

April 18, 2015: Dr. Paul Kockelman, Professor of Linguistic Anthropology, Yale University. Embedding Agents in Linguistic and Cultural Contexts


September 30, 2014: Dr. Steven Shladover. UC Berkeley. Road Vehicle Automation

October 3, 2014: Dr. George I Kamberov. UAA Associate Vice Provost for Research. Unsupervised Detection of Video Sub-Scenes

October 17, 2014: Dr. Frank Witmer. UAA. Computer Science and Engineering. Spatially Explicit Modeling of Human-Environment Interactions.

October 24, 2014: ICAN Student Talks. UAA Dr. Cenek's Complex Systems Researcher Group Projects.

Frazer Tee & Cody McWilliams: EEG Authentication in Noisy and Distracted Environments

Maxwell Franklin: Coupled Dynamics between Fish and Fishermen on Kenai Peninsula - Stochastic Model

Sean Southern: Neuromorhpic Model of the Computer Vision System on Low Power Hardware.

Matthew Devins: Anomaly Detection for Irrigation Canals

October 31, 2014: Dr. Jamie Trammell. UAA. Geography and Environmental Studies. Alternative Landscape Futures: Using Spatially-Explicit Scenarios to Model Landscape Change

November 7, 2014: Drs. Jonathan E Alevy and Lance Howe. UAA. Economics and Public Policy. Choice, risk, and motivated cognition: contributions from economic models

November 14, 2014: Mollie McCarthy. UAA. Biological Sciences. Unearthing past sockeye salmon populations on the Kenai Peninsula

November 21, 2014: Dr. Alan Boraas and Hannah Johnson. UAA/KPC. Anthropology. Salmon, Complexity, and the Cook Inlet Dena’ina

November 5, 2014: Kacy Krieger. Alaska Hydrography Database Coordinator, Alaska Natural Heritage Program UAA. Data Driven Integration.


February 20 -21 2014: Dr. Jennifer Dunne, Santa Fe Institute. Model of food webs in the Aleutian Islands.

March 4 -5 2014: Dr. Mark Brown, University of Florida. Emergy.

March 21 2014: Dr. Katherine Rawlins, Physics Department. IceCube and evidence of neutrinos from beyond our Galaxy.

March 28 2014: Brendan Babb, Computer Science and Engineering Engineering Department. "6 degrees between Kevin Bacon, the Mars Rovers and Evolutionary Computation"

April 4 2014: Dr. Diwakar Vadapalli. Institite for Social and Economic Research. Constructing subsitance use areas from survey data: On the intersection of social and environmental sciences.

April 11 2014: Eric Somerville, Computer Science and Engineering Engineering Department. How complex is it to build a Yup'ik language spellchecker?


September 20, 2013: Dr. Martin Cenek. Department of Computer Science. Neuromorphic Computer Vision.

October 4, 2013: Drs. Mara Kimmel & Dianne Hirshberg. Institute for Social and Economic Research. Governance and Resilience in Northern Communities: Complex systems for complicated times.

October 11, 2013: Dr. Paula Williams. Office of Sustainability. The role of social paradigms in resilience to change and their implication to the environment.

October 17-18, 2013: Dr. David Krakauer. University of Wisconsin. The Past, Present, and Future of Intelligence on Planet Earth

October 17-18, 2013: Dr. David Krakauer. University of Wisconsin. Evolution, Inference and Learning – the common structure of adaptive dynamics

October 25, 2013: Dr. Andreas Tziolas. Department of Physics. Icarus Interstellar

November 1, 2013: Nathan Shafer. Artist. Augmented Reality

November 11, 2013: Dr. Stefanos Folias. Department of Mathematics and Statistics. Oscillations and Synchrony in the Visual Cortex.


February 13-14, 2013: Dr. Hod Lipson. Cornell University. Creative Machines Lab. Accelerating Discovery: Distilling Natural Laws from

Experimental Data, from Physics to Biology

February 20-21, 2013: Dr. Scott Ortman. Santa Fe Institute and Crow Canyon Archaeological Center. Winds from the North: Resolving one of the great mysteries in American Archaeology

February 20-21, 2013: Dr. Scott Ortman. Santa Fe Institute and Crow Canyon Archaeological Center. Culture and the Accumulation of Social Complexity


October 13, 2012 : Dr. Matthew Dickerson, Middlebury College. Department of Computer Science. Spatially Explicit Multi-Agent Simulation & Individual Modeling in NetLogo

November 16, 2012: Jasen Kintner, University of Alaska Anchorage. Department of Computer Science and Engineering .Developing a Stand-Alone Network Intrusion Detection System

November 20, 2012: Dr. David Bowie, University of Alaska Anchorage. Department of English. Modeling Diffusion of Linguistic Variation