This year’s programs feature returning lecturers, and one 2nd generation SFIer
The four-week 2013 complex systems summer school, held annually in Santa Fe and at various times in China and South America, was the 32th SFI summer school in 25 years. The 2013 school’s 59 participants included an interesting first: a 2nd generation SFIer.
“My father was a postdoc at SFI for a short time while I was a baby, so I’ve been there before,” says 2013 CSSS student Oskar Lindgren, a PhD candidate at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden. “The reason I came was that both my father, my supervisor, and another colleague have been and enjoyed their stays immensely. CSSS is supposed to be unique and an opportunity not to be missed. I can see how that is true now.”
The program introduces graduate students and postdocs to a range of topics in complex systems science. This year’s program ran June 3-28, directed by SFI External Professor Sander Bais.
Several of this year’s lecturers were past CSSS participants.
SFI External Professor Aaron Clauset spoke to this year’s CSSS class about networks, human social dynamics, and competition. “Returning 10 years after I was a student was a special experience for me,” he says. “I enjoyed chatting with the students about their projects and ideas, and I was impressed with the thoughtfulness of the questions they asked during my lectures. It was great fun to be back, and I hope some of these students can stand on the stage as lecturers in a few years to give back to the next generation, as I was able to this time.”
SFI Postdoctoral Fellow Clio Andris, a member of SFI’s Cities & Urbanization research team, lectured on networks and cities.
“When I was a summer school student, I looked up to the postdocs at SFI so much, and I never thought I would get to be a part of their group. Getting to talk with them after class, or when they came out at night, was a nerdy little ‘hollywood’ for me.”
“I was especially proud of this year’s students for coming to the school not as a physicist or as a biologist, but as someone who wanted to learn interdisciplinary concepts and learn from each other,” she adds. “[This] reminded me that the best thing to come to CSSS with is an open mind.”
SFI’s Graduate workshop in computational social science, Modeling, and complexity offers a small group of grad students from economics and the social sciences a chance to design their own projects and use computational techniques to answer social dynamics questions. The 2013 workshop’s co-directors were SFI External Professors Scott Page and John Miller.
Miller says this year’s 10 participants were among the most diverse in the program’s 19 years, with scholars from sociology, economics, international and public affairs, political science, management, and marketing.
“For two weeks each summer we have the opportunity to form the most interesting social science department in the world,” he says. “We gather together this incredibly bright, creative, and motivated group and encourage them to pursue the big questions in interesting ways. There’s this immediate fellowship that forms among the group, as students put in long hours in the pursuit of new ideas. Former students often report that this is one of the most meaningful experiences they had in graduate school, which I take as both a sign of what we are doing right and of what graduate education is doing wrong.”
This year’s Graduate Workshop took place June 16-29 in Santa Fe.
SFI’s research experiences for undergraduates pairs undergraduate scientists with SFI faculty mentors. Participants are encouraged to investigate complex social systems through a research project they design with their mentors.
SFI VP for Education and Outreach Ginger Richardson says the program’s goals include sending young scholars back to their home institutions with new methods, big ideas, and confidence to tackle complex systems problems.
“The training extends to the entire research process, from conception to completion: how to focus big, ambitious questions down to a manageable size, how to work with data, how to build results and statistical tests into an effective argument, how to prepare a research presentation, how to write a scientific paper and navigate the peer-review process,” says REU Robert Hawkins. “When this summer is over, I’ll take away a strong foundation for a career in research and a set of lasting friendships.”
The 2013 REU program runs June 3-August 9 in Santa Fe. Thirteen undergraduates are participating, including a small cohort of “advanced” participants – returning program alumni who serve as mentors and continue their research.
“Most of my research experience so far had been on fairly traditional computer science topics, and I wanted to branch out to areas that truly interested me but that I hadn’t had a chance to work with,” says 2nd-year REU Bryan Wilder. “It’s been incredibly valuable to interact with researchers across such a wide range of disciplines and institutions, and I can’t think where else I’d have that chance.”