In the summer of 2016, I had the good fortune to be selected along with nine other students to attend the 2016 Graduate Workshop in Computational Social Science and Modeling (GWCSS) at the Santa Fe Institute in Santa Fe, NM. Carnegie Mellon Professor John H. Miller and University of Michigan Professor Scott E. Page were our excellent Santa Fe faculty guides for the workshop, which included a combination of lectures on complexity science, complex systems, and computational modeling by Professors Miller and Page, as well as other Santa Fe faculty including Chris Kempes, Simon DeDeo, and Mirta Galesic.
The workshop was a two-week, residential intensive in beautiful Santa Fe. Concurrently, SFI runs a four-week Complex Systems Summer School which brings additional notables in the field of complexity and computational social science, including economist Brian Arthur, Robert Boyd whose 1988 book on cultural evolution coauthored by Peter J. Richerson has been cited more than 7000 times, and Doyne Farmer. As a GWCSS attendee, I was able to attend any of the Summer School lectures I could slip away for.
Lectures and discussions were wide-ranging but all anchored in the science of complexity and computational modeling as tools of scientific investigation. A sampling of our discussions in the GWCSS:
* model diversity (Scott Page)
* evolutionary computation (John Miller)
* information theory and conflict (Simon DeDeo)
* network structure and performance (Mirta Galesic)
I was incredibly lucky to attend the 2016 workshop with a distinguished cohort of fellow graduate students, from whom I learned a great deal during conversation, discussion, and spirited debate over the course of our two weeks together.
During the 2016 GWCSS, I began work on an agent-based model to investigate the role of personality variables in situations in a work setting (view project on ResearchGate). This work continues.
I am grateful to have had the opportunity to attend the 2016 Graduate Workshop in Computational Social Science and recommend it highly.
If you have an interest in complexity science and computational social science, consider applying for either the 2017 GWCSS or the 2017 Complex Systems Summer School at the Santa Fe Institute.
Please note that the application deadline for the 2017 GWCSS is 14 February 2017.
More information about the 2016 workshop I attended, including a reading list, is available from the 2016 website and wiki.
