Research Statement

My current research interests involves the use and development of computational techniques to help understand human or social complex systems. Human systems (and society at large) can be considered as a complex adaptive system and the non-trivial phenomena observed in social systems exhibit self-organised and emergent properties. If we want to understand: why neighbourhoods segregate, the way cities grow, understand why groups of individuals may or may not stampede, or how a seemingly innocuous policy may drive a system to cascading failures, then we need to understand the connectivity and behaviour of the individuals in these systems. Traditional forms of mathematical analysis are often ill-equipped to tackle these problems. Complex Systems models (e.g., agent-based models) are the primary method for reasoning about human complex systems.

My research agenda focuses on the development of (computational models of) artificial societies in order to understand (and perhaps manipulate) complex social processes. The scientific method I apply involves the development of data-driven models that provide virtual replicas of social processes. Therefore my research spans everything from data collection (and analysis), to the development of new computational methods for semi-automated model creation, to the application of models in real world policy. My work has been successfully applied to a number of societal challenges in funded research projects (see: School Segregation, Slum Growth, Crowd Dynamics, Transportation).

[CV]

H-Index: 27

I10-Index: 68

As of Sept 2020

[what is an h-index?]

PhD students:

• Hu Nan (2014) [thesis]
• Vaisagh Viswanathan Thattamparambil (2015) [thesis]
• Xu Yadong (2016)
• Debraj Roy (2017)
• Harsha Krishna (2018)
• Jurjen Helmus (2021)
• Philip Rutten (2021)
• Valentin Melnikov (2021)
• Eric Dignum  (2023)
• Maarten van den Ende (2024)
• James Nevin (2024)

• Zhang Tianyou (2014) (Co-supervisor) [thesis]

Service:

• Programme Committee: SIMUTOOLS, IEEE/ACM Distributed Simulation and Real Time Applications (DS-RT), Autonomous Agents & Multi-Agent Systems AAMAS 2015, International Conference on Computational Science (ICCS), IEEE International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Applications, MABS 12th International Workshop on Multi-Agent-Based Simulation, IEEE/WIC/ACM Intelligent Agent Technologies (IAT), AsiaSim
• Editor: Journal of Computational Science 2011-present, ACM Transactions on Modeling and Computer Simulation (TOMACS) 2015-2016