The New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI) is an independent

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

research institution and think tank dedicated to advancing analytics and its application to the challenges of society, and the interaction of

complex systems A complex system is a system composed of many components which may interact with each other. Examples of complex systems are Earth's global climate, organisms, the human brain, infrastructure such as power grid, transportation or communication sy ...

with the environment. NECSI offers educational programs, conducts research, and hosts the International Conference on Complex Systems. It was founded in 1996 and is located in

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

, Massachusetts.

Overview

NECSI was established in 1996 by faculty of various New England academic institutions, including MIT,

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

Brandeis Brandeis is a surname. People *Antonietta Brandeis (1848–1926), Czech-born Italian painter *Brandeis Marshall, American data scientist * Friedl Dicker-Brandeis, Austrian artist and Holocaust victim * Irma Brandeis, American Dante scholar *Louis ...

, and others, to encourage communication and collaboration among researchers studying complex systems. The NECSI web site describes "

" as follows:

Complex systems have multiple interacting components whose
collective behavior The expression collective behavior was first used by Franklin Henry Giddings and employed later by Robert Park and Ernest Burgess, Herbert Blumer, Ralph H. Turner and Lewis Killian, and Neil Smelser to refer to social processes and events ...
cannot be simply inferred from the behavior of components. The recognition that understanding the parts cannot explain collective behavior has led to various new concepts and methodologies that are affecting all fields of science and engineering, and are being applied to technology, business and even
social policy Social policy is a plan or action of government or institutional agencies which aim to improve or reform society. Some professionals and universities consider social policy a subset of public policy, while other practitioners characterize soci ...
.

NECSI promotes collaboration and dissemination of new research among complex systems researchers in wide-ranging disciplines and numerous institutions. NECSI's activities for this purpose include hosting an international research conference and maintaining a roster of affiliated scholars and co-faculty.

International Conference on Complex Systems

NECSI hosts the International Conference on Complex Systems (ICCS), whose aims are:

first, to investigate those properties or characteristics that appear to be common to the very different complex systems now under study; and second, to encourage cross fertilization among the many disciplines involved.

ICCS takes place on an occasional basis, with the most recent (eighth conference) in 2011. ICCS conferences have featured notable computer scientists (e.g., Gerald Sussman), mathematicians (e.g., Stephen Wolfram), systems theorists (e.g.,

John Sterman John David Sterman is the Jay W. Forrester Professor of Management, and the current director of the MIT System Dynamics Group at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He is also co-faculty at the New England Complex Systems Institute. He is mostl ...

), physicists (e.g. Sandy Pentland), economists (e.g., James Stock), and others. Events at ICCS include research presentations and workshops, as well as pedagogical sessions aimed at a wider community.

Affiliates and co-faculty

NECSI provides a public platform for affiliates and co-faculty at numerous academic institutions, primarily in the New England region. These researchers also contribute to NECSI educational programs. ;Faculty and co-Faculty *

Yaneer Bar-Yam Yaneer Bar-Yam (born 1959) is an American scientist and activist specializing in complex systems. An expert in the quantitative analysis of pandemics, he advised policy makers on the Western African Ebola virus epidemic and founded EndCoronavirus ...

, President * Michel Baranger *Dan Braha *

Charles Cantor Charles R. Cantor (born 26 August 1942) is an American molecular geneticist who, in conjunction with David Schwartz, developed pulse field gel electrophoresis for very large DNA molecules. Cantor's three-volume book, ''Biophysical Chemistry'' ...

*Richard Cooper *

Terrence Deacon Terrence William Deacon (born 1950) is an American neuroanthropologist (Ph.D. in Biological Anthropology, Harvard University 1984). He taught at Harvard for eight years, relocated to Boston University in 1992, and is currently Professor of Anth ...

*Irving Epstein * William Gelbart *Ernest Hartmann * Jerome Kagan *

Mehran Kardar Mehran Kardar ( fa, مهران کاردار; August 1957) is an Iranian born physicist and professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and co-faculty at the New England Complex Systems Institute (USA). He received his ...

Les Kaufman Les Kaufman is an evolutionary ecologist specializing in the biology and conservation of aquatic ecosystems. He has special expertise in coral reef biology, the evolution and ecology of tropical great lakes fishes, and ecosystem-based management of ...

*Eric Klopfer *Frannie Leautier *Blake LeBaron *Luci Leykum * Seth Lloyd * Sandy Pentland *Tom Petzinger *Stuart Pimm *Larry Rudolph *

Thomas Schelling Thomas Crombie Schelling (April 14, 1921 – December 13, 2016) was an American economist and professor of foreign policy, national security, nuclear strategy, and arms control at the School of Public Policy at University of Maryland, College ...

Peter Senge Peter Michael Senge (born 1947) is an American systems scientist who is a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management, co-faculty at the New England Complex Systems Institute, and the founder of the Society for Organizational Learning ...

*Temple Smith *

*James Stock *

Nassim Nicholas Taleb Nassim Nicholas Taleb (; alternatively ''Nessim ''or'' Nissim''; born 12 September 1960) is a Lebanese-American essayist, mathematical statistician, former option trader, risk analyst, and aphorist whose work concerns problems of randomness ...

*Hiroshi Tasaka *

Günter Wagner Gunter or Günter may refer to: * Gunter rig, a type of rig used in sailing, especially in small boats * Gunter Annex, Alabama, a United States Air Force installation * Gunter, Texas, city in the United States People Surname * Chris Gunter ( ...

*Peter Timmer ;Affiliates *Marcus de Aguiar *Zvi Bar-Yam *Bruce Boghosian *Raffaele Calabretta *Jeffrey Cares *Gavin Crooks *

Eric Feigl-Ding Eric Liang Feigl-Ding (born March 28, 1983) is an American public health scientist who is currently an epidemiologist and Chief of COVID Task Force at the New England Complex Systems Institute. He was formerly a faculty member and researcher at ...

*Meghan Dierks *Melissa Gerber *Helen Harte *Steven Hassan *Sui Huang *Michael J. Jacobson *Fumiaki Katagiri *Andreas Kemper *Mark Klein *Greg Lindsay *David Meyer *Ali Minai *Joseph Norman *Hiroki Sayama *Paul Seguin * Tommaso Toffoli *Omer Trajman *Sheldon White *Uri Wilensky

Research areas

Evolution and ecology

NECSI researchers have contributed to the understanding of evolutionary dynamics, the evolution of

altruism Altruism is the principle and moral practice of concern for the welfare and/or happiness of other human beings or animals, resulting in a quality of life both material and spiritual. It is a traditional virtue in many cultures and a cor ...

, the origin and characterization of

biodiversity Biodiversity or biological diversity is the variety and variability of life on Earth. Biodiversity is a measure of variation at the genetic ('' genetic variability''), species ('' species diversity''), and ecosystem ('' ecosystem diversity'') ...

, and the interplay between evolution and ecology. Much of the work done at NECSI has focused on the role of the spatial distribution of species, an often overlooked factor of evolutionary dynamics. In the case where portions of a population are geographically isolated from each other, for example,

was able to demonstrate shortcomings in the

gene-centered view of evolution With gene defined as "not just one single physical bit of DNA utall replicas of a particular bit of DNA distributed throughout the world", the gene-centered view of evolution, gene's eye view, gene selection theory, or selfish gene theory hol ...

, an approximation that is valid only if there is complete mixing of alleles in the gene pool.

Networks

Studies of

network topologies Network topology is the arrangement of the elements ( links, nodes, etc.) of a communication network. Network topology can be used to define or describe the arrangement of various types of telecommunication networks, including command and contr ...

have found surprising similarities between a variety of complex social, technological and biological networks. NECSI research in networks focuses on the relationship between structure, dynamics and function. The study of networks has emerged in diverse disciplines as a means of analyzing complex relational data.

Social systems

NECSI research in social systems focuses on the collective actions that create revolutions, ethnic violence, urban health, fads and panics, global food and so on. The role of individuals and organization can be analyzed by techniques and tools of

Representation

Complex systems exhibit behaviors at a variety of spatial and temporal scales. Researchers working at NECSI have developed a mathematical formalism for simultaneously describing systems on multiple scales. This formalism had been applied to physical systems, information systems, organizational behavior, engineering projects and military conflict. An essential tool for multiscale analysis, the complexity profile, the relationship between the observed complexity of a system and the scale of observation.

Post-crisis focus on social and economic systems

Since 2009, the Institute's research focus has shifted to socio-economic systems, with particular attention to the causes and consequences of the

2008 financial crisis 8 (eight) is the natural number following 7 and preceding 9. In mathematics 8 is: * a composite number, its proper divisors being , , and . It is twice 4 or four times 2. * a power of two, being 2 (two cubed), and is the first number of ...

and dynamics of

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

networks and social sentiment. Policy-relevant articles on stock market regulation and market crashes, food riots and the causes of high

food prices Food prices refer to the average price level for food across countries, regions and on a global scale. Food prices have an impact on producers and consumers of food. Price levels depend on the food production process, including food marketing ...

, and the European bond crisis have been released straight to the press. Peer-reviewed articles continue to appear on other subjects.

Further fields of research

Systems biology Systems biology is the computational and mathematical analysis and modeling of complex biological systems. It is a biology-based interdisciplinary field of study that focuses on complex interactions within biological systems, using a holistic ...

Systems engineering Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary field of engineering and engineering management that focuses on how to design, integrate, and manage complex systems over their life cycles. At its core, systems engineering utilizes systems thinki ...

* Organizational management * Negotiation *

Network Science Network science is an academic field which studies complex networks such as telecommunication networks, computer networks, biological networks, cognitive and semantic networks, and social networks, considering distinct elements or actors rep ...

Public attention

NECSI's work on the global food crisis has been widely cited by the press, by movements to curb financial speculation, and included among the top-10 discoveries in science in 2011 by

Wired ''Wired'' (stylized as ''WIRED'') is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquartered in San ...

. NECSI's scientific visualizations have received multiple citations on top-10 lists. NECSI has been called "a pioneer in using mathematics, computation and other quantitative methods to analyse topics like ethnic violence, economic crises and healthcare systems" by the press.

Early Warning on the COVID-19 Coronavirus Pandemic

Prior to global lockdowns, in January, 2020 Joseph Norman, Yaneer Bar Yam, and Nassim Taleb submitted a paper to the White House administration, urging them to take drastic steps to curtail the disease. NECSI later assembled EndCoronaVirus.org, which included over 4,000 volunteers by March 21, 2020. The network of volunteers built endCoronavirus.org with the goal to minimize the impact of COVID-19 by providing useful data and guidelines for action.

References

External links

NECSIBarabasiLabNorth Western Institute on Complex SystemsCABDyN OxfordCNets IndianaCenter for Complexity Science, Warwick University
{{authority control Research institutes in Massachusetts Systems science institutes