Speakers

Francisco A. Rodrigues is an associate professor of Complex Systems and Data Science at the Institute of Mathematics and Computer Science (ICMC), University of São Paulo - Brazil. He was a Leverhulme Visiting professor at the University of Warwick, the UK, Mathematics Institute, in 2018. He holds a degree in Physics (2001, B.A. degree) and a PhD in Computational Physics from Physics Institute of São Carlos (University of São Paulo). Francisco has authored more than 100 scientific articles in international journals, including Physical Review Letters, Advances in Physics, Physics Reports, Physical Review X, Climate Dynamics, Nature Ecology, among others. These papers have received more than 5,500 citations (h-index 27). He also authored the book "An Introduction to Multiplex Networks: Basic Formalism and Structural Properties", published by Springer in 2018. His research is focused on complex networks, epidemic models, synchronization, machine learning and applications, that include neuroscience, systems biology, ecology, climate dynamics, and transportation networks.

Stefan Thurner is full professor for Science of Complex Systems at the Medical University of Vienna, where he chairs Section for Science of Complex Systems. He is external professor at the Santa Fe Institute, senior researcher at IIASA, and president of the Complexity Science Hub Vienna. Stefan obtained a PhD in theoretical physics from the Technical University of Vienna and a PhD in economics from the University of Vienna. He held postdoc positions at Humboldt University of Berlin and Boston University before joining the faculty of the University of Vienna and later Medical University. His habilitation is in theoretical physics. Stefan started his career with contributions to theoretical particle physics and gradually shifted his research focus to the understanding of complex systems. Stefan has published more than 200 scientific articles in fundamental physics (topological excitations in quantum field theories, statistics and entropy of complex systems), applied mathematics (wavelet statistics, fractal harmonic analysis, anomalous diffusion), network theory, evolutionary systems, life sciences (network medicine, gene regulatory networks, bioinformatics, heart beat dynamics, cell motility), economics and finance (price formation, regulation, systemic risk) and lately in social sciences (opinion formation, bureaucratic inefficiency, collective human behavior, efficiency of healthcare systems). He holds two patents. His work has been covered extensively by Austrian as well as international media such as the New York Times, BBC world, Nature, New Scientist, Physics World, and is featured in more than 400 newspaper, radio and television reports. Stefan was elected Austrian “scientist of the year” in 2018.

Michael Small is the CSIRO-UWA Chair of Complex Engineering Systems at the University of Western Australia. Prior to joining UWA he held several academic and research positions at Hong Kong Polytechnic University and Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh. His research is in the broad areas of complex systems and dynamical systems and focussed specifically on how observed data can be used in better understand deterministic complex systems. He has worked in a range of applications including: mental health, disease transmission, teamwork in games, maintenance engineering and organisational structure, physiology and finance. He is editor of Chaos and associate editor of International Journal of Bifurcation and Chaos.

David Kessler received his BS from MIT and his PhD from Princeton. His original field was lattice gauge theories, but in his postdoc at Los Alamos he initiated a second-order phase transition to Nonlinear Dynamics, inspired by the problem of pattern formation in dendritic growth. After a second postdoc at Rutgers, he spent seven years at the Univ. of Michigan, studying various problems in pattern formation and nonlinear growth. He then moved to Bar-Ilan University, where he has continued to straddle the border between nonlinear dynamics, statistical mechanics and systems biology. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society.

Michele Battle-Fisher is a systems thinking scholar and bioethicist from the United States. She is currently the Research Manager for Equitas Health Institute (U.S). She is an Adjunct Instructor at Temple University Center for Urban Bioethics (U.S.) and Adjunct Assistant Professor at Wright State University Boonshoft School of Medicine (U.S.). She published an influential academic monograph, Application of Systems Thinking to Health Policy and Public Health Ethics- Public Health and Private Illness (Springer). The book is a 2016 Doody's Core Title, selected as an influential medical text for library curation. A TEDxDartmouth speaker in 2018, she is published in systems thinking, bioethics, humanities, and communication studies peer-reviewed journals and public outlets. She is a standing member of The Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science (BCSSS) (Vienna, Austria) and is a Research Scholar with the Ronin Institute (U.S.).

Professor Ofer Lahav is Perren Chair of Astronomy at University College London (UCL). His research area is observational Cosmology, in particular probing and characterising Dark Matter and Dark Energy. His work involves Machine Learning methods, and he co-directs the Centre for Doctoral Training in Data Intensive Science. He has led the UK consortium of the Dark Energy Survey (DES) and he co-chaired the international DES Science Committee from the project’s early days until 2016. Lahav is the lead-editor of the new book “The Dark Energy Survey: The Story of a Cosmological Experiment" (World Scientific, 2020). He also holds leadership roles in the next-generation projects, e.g. Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI). Lahav studied Physics at Tel-Aviv University (BSc, 1980), at Ben-Gurion University (MSc, 1985) and earned his Ph.D. (1988) from the University of Cambridge, where he was later a Member of Staff at the Institute of Astronomy (1990-2003) and a Fellow of St Catharine's College. At UCL he served as the Head of Astrophysics (2004-2011), establishing Cosmology as a research area, He held an Advance ERC grant (2012-2018), and among his other awards is the Royal Astronomical Society George Darwin Lecture (2020).