The Clarkson Center for Complex Systems Science was founded by the inaugural director, Erik Bollt in the spring of 2017. There are several motivations\/benefits for the center. For example, there exists an opportunity to \u201cexpand this collaboration inward\u201d to include colleagues at Clarkson in various academic departments. Doing so would provide an opportunity for Clarkson to make a greater impact in the field thus enhancing our research reputation. A strength at Clarkson is that our culture, our size, and our application oriented philosophy all celebrate the idea that working together across fields is what we do, and what we do well. This center is specifically advanced in this spirit. We will offer a venue, and a means to bring us together in groupings and combinations to foster collaborations in cutting edge research that may not otherwise take place, or even occur to specialists in individual disciplines. Together, our work can emerge strengthened as a group. Theory, feeds application and application feeds theory, and together we benefit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is a complex system? Broadly speaking, we view complex systems as systems which are generally made up of multiple interacting “parts”, which lead to surprising emergent behaviors in the whole. These emergent behaviors tend to arise because of nonlinearities, either in the individual parts, in the interactions between them or both. <\/p>\n\n\n\n