Project Abstract: OISE 0623953 International Research Experiences for Students (IRES) in Complex Adaptive Systems with the Santa Fe Institute in China
This IRES award supports 75 graduate students over three years from across the U.S. to participate in a 4-week, research-focused summer school on Complex Adaptive Systems in Beijing, China. The Santa Fe Institute's (SFI) Complex Systems Summer School (CSSS) in China is an international, interdisciplinary, month-long graduate program providing research training explicitly designed to prepare U.S. students for interdisciplinary, international, collaborative research in science and engineering. The CSSS was begun in 2004 and is held in partnership with Dr. Chen, Xiaosong, Professor of Physics at the Institute for Theoretical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. The U.S. PI is Dr. David Feldman, Professor of Physics and Mathematics at the College of the Atlantic in Maine. All requested funds go to offset travel costs for U.S. students.
New technologies are making available large quantities of data that were unavailable a generation ago. With these new technologies, researchers are increasingly able to use novel computational and analytic techniques to analyze large quantities of data and to study complex problems that lie outside traditionally quantitative academic disciplines. Increased computing power has also made evident the need for new analytic techniques and algorithms that are better suited to the frontier of complexity. Recognizing the new international opportunities for access to and analysis of complex data, the research community has become increasingly international in focus, with China, India, The European Union, and South America investing heavily in international research collaborations. These dual trends, the increasing interdisciplinary and international face of science, present challenges and opportunities for U.S. graduate training in research.
The SFI China Complex Systems Summer School (CSSS) meets an important need in graduate research education: teaching students tools and concepts in complex systems, and giving students hands-on experience in interdisciplinary research. The project is thus an important complement to the strong disciplinary research education offered by U.S. graduate schools. Over the three years of this project, the CSSS will develop a large network of U.S. graduate students with direct international collaborative experience who will utilize this experience to become leading international scholars.
