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CoCo seminar: "Introduction to the Center for Social Complexity at George Mason University" by William G. Kennedy (Computational & Data Sciences, George Mason University)
Details
Fall 2023
Introduction to the Center for Social Complexity at George Mason University
Dr. William G. Kennedy
Associate Professor, Computational & Data Sciences Department, George Mason University
Wednesday September 20, 2023 12:00-1:00pm EDT
On Zoom (meeting link: below)
https://binghamton.zoom.us/j/92039296573?pwd=UXpnYzBLeFRMRVQ4enhFbzdjdWhZdz09
Abstract:
Dr. Bill Kennedy, current co-director of the Center for Social Complexity, will review the Center's history and major projects, current research, and plans as the Center reaches its 20th anniversary. The Center started with the origins of the first computational social science PhD granting program and has produced over 50 doctorates in the field. Projects have investigated long-term societal change, migration due to climate change, the origins of conflicts, and responses to disasters including the social impact of nuclear detonations using computational social science methods. We (the Center) are interested in understanding and investigating how to model complex adaptive systems to explain them and make useful predictions about their behavior. We are also interested in how different complex adaptive systems (society and technology, for example) interact in intricate and difficult to predict ways. The Center's mission is to become an established, premier, and multi-disciplinary Center for the study of complex social systems within the university, the country, and the world. To do so, the Center places an emphasis on the complexity of human social systems and on the intricacies of their interactions with other complex systems such as are found in nature and in the rise of technology. We are eager to collaborate with others to achieve this mission.
Speaker bio:
William G. (Bill) Kennedy is interested in integrating cognitive science and cognitive modeling of individual into computational social science up to the societal level. He builds cognitive and agent-based models (ABM) on topics such as integrated, long-term learning, the origins of conflict in East Africa, long-term migration due to climate change, impacts of social policy on stress felt by caregivers, and the immediate reactions of the population of a mega-city (New York) to a nuclear WMD (weapon of mass destruction). His newest project is modeling the social impacts of nuclear detonations on the performance of a society's infrastructure sectors. Dr. Kennedy received his PhD from George Mason University (Mason) after full careers with the Navy (retired as a Captain) and the federal government working in nuclear submarines, nuclear power plant regulation, energy policy, and performance accountability. He has been working at Mason in computational social science for over a 15 years conducting research and teaching courses in computational data science, computational social science, and knowledge mining. He is now a Co-Director of the Center for Social Complexity.
For more information, contact Stephanie Tulk Jesso (stulkjesso@binghamton.edu). http://coco.binghamton.edu/