William Tracy

Vice President for Applied Complexity




As SFI’s Vice President for Applied Complexity, Will works to bring applicable insights from complexity science to the world of practice. He also connects SFI researchers with non-academic datasets, insights, and funding. Towards these ends, Will is deeply involved in developing blended communities of scholars, practitioners, and students and serves as the PI on Project ARCH. These communities are increasingly virtual, and rely on a suite of online tools.

Prior to joining SFI, Will was a faculty member and undergraduate program director for the Lally School of Management at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He is proficient in Mandarin Chinese and formerly served as the Associate Director of SFI’s CSSS-Beijing program. Will was at the World Bank before entering academia, where he focused on human developmental economics in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. He also has private sector and entrepreneurial experience in the US, China, and India. Will holds a Ph.D. in management with a certificate in human complex systems from UCLA and a B.A. (cum laude) in economics from Swarthmore College.