The Complex Systems Advanced Academic Workshop (CSAAW, pronounced "see-saw") is an ongoing interdisciplinary research forum that receives funding from Rackham via its Rackham Interdisciplinary Workshops (RIW) program as well as the Center for Study of Complex Systems.
The goal of CSAAW is to support graduate students interested in complex systems research, especially those working towards writing a dissertation that involves ideas from many disciplines as well as tools used to study complex systems. Through our regular meetings, students discuss their own work and receive feedback from other students, faculty and researchers. For some meetings, students present "tutorials" on various complex systems related topics or methodology. Other meetings consist of talks by and discussions with invited speakers who are active in complex systems research. These speakers, many of whom are recent graduates, discuss their own work in addition to providing advice on how to successfully complete a complex systems (interdisciplinary) disseration, and how to navigate through the post-graduate job market.
If you have questions about CSAAW or would like to join, please contact csaaw-organizers@umich.edu. For the most up-to-date info about CSAAW, please visit our wiki. The wiki has information about the research interests of current participants, links to talks from previous meetings, and is a great place to begin exploring a wide variety of topics in complex systems.
Maria Riolo
CSAAW Featured Student
To highlight the incredible breadth of research being done by complex systems students at the University of Michigan, CSAAW is pleased to present a new "featured student" every few weeks.
Our featured student is Maria Riolo. She is a second year PhD student in the Applied and Interdisciplinary Mathematics program researching the dynamics of host-parasitoid systems in spatially heterogeneous environments with Prof. Pej Rohani (EEB and CSCS) and Prof. Mark Hunter (EEB and SNRE). Her other current research projects include working with Prof. Mark Newman (Physics and CSCS) to investigate network partitioning on a budget and with Bob Savit (Physics) exploring an agent-based model of co-adapation.
Methods and tools: Numerical and agent based models (both mostly implemented in Python) and mathematical models (mostly implemented on the backs of napkins).
Complex Systems concepts: Emergence of high-level structures from low-level rules, percolation and other phase transitions
If you know of candidates for future feature students, please contact the csaaw-organizers@umich.edu. Descriptions of past featured students can be found on this page.
