2026

Clémentine Cottineau

Assistant Professor of Urban studies at  Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands

Quantitative urban geographer. I model the evolution and causal relationships between economic segregation and economic inequality in cities, using systematic literature reviews, longitudinal analysis of empirical microdata and generative agent-based modelling. I hold a PhD in Geography from the University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (2014), where I analysed and modelled the evolution of urbanisation and urban shrinkage in the (post-)Soviet space. During previous research positions at UCL’s Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis and CNRS’s Centre Maurice Halbwachs, I have worked on the patterns and regularities of urban scaling, industrial geographies and the history of urban models.

Talk: TBC

2025 

Cheick Amed Diloma Gabriel Traore

Assistant Professor at the Institute of Computer Engineering and Telecommunications at the Polytechnic School of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso

Researcher specializing in modeling multi-agent systems. He earned his PhD from Cheikh Anta Diop University (UCAD) in Senegal. His doctoral research focused on the formalization and simulation of Sahelian transhumance as a complex adaptive system. Utilizing mathematical and computational techniques, he developed agent-based models to analyze the spatiotemporal dynamics of transhumant herds, taking into account factors such as herd behavior, environmental conditions, and socio-economic pressures. He is currently working on integrating viability theory with agent-based modeling to address sustainable development challenges in rapidly changing and complex socio-economic systems. His research has been published in several renowned conferences and scientific journals, and he continues to actively contribute to the fields of complex systems modeling and image processing.

Talk: Modeling transhumance in the Sahel: between mathematics and social sciences 

Alexander Melchior

Senior Advisor at the Dutch Government  (Ministry of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Climate and Green Growth and the Ministry or Agriculture, Fisheries, Food safety and Nature)

Responsible for the use of AI and algorithms in the Dutch government. In the past seven years he pursued a PhD at Utrecht University (NE) on the effective use of Agent-Based Modelling (ABM) for complex policy process. This PhD enabled him to combine his work and experiences in a policy world with ABM. It resulted in a Thesis titles “Modelling for Policy is More than Policy Modelling; The Useful Application of Agent-Based Modelling in Complex Policy Processes”. He defended his thesis in June 2025.

Talk: Modelling for Policy is more than Policy Modelling

2024 

Moira Zellner

Professor of Policy and Urban Affairs; Director of Participatory Modeling and Data Science; Director, MS in Urban Informatics Program; Co-Director of NULab for Digital Humanities and Computational Social Science

Her research examines how participatory complex systems modeling with stakeholders and decision-makers can support collaborative policy exploration, social learning, and system-wide transformation. She has served as Principal Investigator and Co-Investigator in interdisciplinary projects examining how specific policy, technological and behavioral factors influence the emergence and impacts of a range of complex socio-ecological systems problems, where interaction effects make responsibilities, burdens, and future pathways unclear. Moira has taught a variety of workshops on complexity-based modeling of socio-ecological systems, for training of both scientists and decision-makers in the US and abroad. She has served the academic community spanning across the social and natural sciences, as reviewer of journals and grants and as a member of various scientific organizations. She is dedicated to serving the public through her engaged research and activism.

Talk: Participatory complex systems modeling for collaborative and equitable planning

Hang Xiong

Professor of Economics at Huazhong Agricultural University, China

He has been working on modelling farmers’ decision-making with computer simulation models and complex social networks. He is interested in understanding how to use digital technologies and data-driven innovations to make agriculture more sustainable and resilient. Prior to joining HZAU, he was a postdoc research fellow at Agricultural Economics and Policy Group, ETH Zurich (2017-2018) and a research associate at the Department of Geography, King’s College London (2016). He obtained his PhD in Computational Social Science from University College Dublin.

Talk: Policy evaluation with the simulation of micro-macro link: rationale and practices

2023 

Tatiana Filatova

Professor of Computational Economics, Delft University of Technology

Her research line focuses on exploring how behavioral changes at micro level may lead to regime shifts on macro in complex adaptive socio-technical-environmental systems, in application to climate-resilient development. Her team uses spatial agent-based models, collects (panel) data on households’ pro-environmental choices via social surveys, and increasingly gets interested in how social institutions co-evolve with these behavioral changes (e.g. in the recently granted VIDI project on social tipping points in transformational adaptation to sea level rise). Most of her current work centers around the ERC project that links individual adaptation of households and firms to climate-driven flood risks in coastal cities/regions with macro damage assessments in climate policy models.

Talk: Computing societal dynamics in response to climate change

César García-Díaz

Associate Professor at the Department of Business Administration,  Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Colombia

Computational social scientist, engineer, and systems researcher who works on various aspects of modeling the dynamics of organizational, economic, and social systems. His research focuses on the connections between micro-level rules, structural interdependence, and macro-level outcomes across diverse settings, including organizational dynamics, industry evolution, competitive spatial location, and agricultural markets. 

Talk: Patterns of change in intra- and inter-organizational dynamics

2022

Kavin Narasimhan

Assistant Professor in Data Science, University of Warwick, United Kingdom

Her research focuses on developing computational “sandbox” environments that allow policymakers and community stakeholders to explore and test potential social or policy interventions before implementing them in the real world. These tools represent complex systems, such as community-based water management or demand-side energy use, and allow users to adjust different intervention levers (e.g. policy rules, incentives, or behavioural assumptions). She has a PhD in Computer Science from Queen Mary University of London and a Bachelor of Engineering (B.E.) in Computer Science and Engineering from Anna University, India.

Talk: The Role of Evidence in Modelling Water, Energy and…Parties: Reflections from the Journey

Jennifer Badham

Assistant Professor in Social Data Science, Durham University, United Kingdom

Her research concerns the ways in which social structure shapes the transmission of ideas, disease or behaviour. She both use and extend computational methods that are drawn from complexity science, such as agent-based modelling and network analysis. She is also interested in methods as a topic of study rather than simply a tool, particularly how models are used in policy processes and how people relate to models and data. Prior to entering academia, she was a senior health policy advisor in Australia, developing government and industry positions on topics such as electronic health records and private health insurance funding.

Talk: Justified stories as one role for models in policy decisions

Van Dyke Parunak

Senior Research Scientist at Parallax Advanced Research Institute, United States

Longstanding researcher in the area of agent-based modelling and complexity science focusing on multi-agent systems.

Talk: Learning from and simulating of social behavior of all creatures great and small