Centre for Complex Systems

Exploring complex natural and artificial systems

We study collective behaviours and critical phenomena in various contexts: brain dynamics, computational epidemiology, urban and social dynamics, swarm intelligence, distributed computation, systems biology and nanoscience.

Our centre hosts biennial symposia and camps designed to bring together leading international scholars to discuss the latest in complex systems research.

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Our research

Our research has an impact on diverse areas such as neuroengineering, epidemic modelling, active matter, systemic risk analysis and crisis forecasting, disaster and emergency management, as well as critical infrastructure stability.

It helps to develop solutions that can be applied to a wide range of industries including information and communication technologies, financial services, health, energy and civil and transport infrastructure.

CRISIS is funded as a Sydney Research Excellence Initiative (SREI 2020). It centres on the research project 'Modelling social risks and extreme events: from Angkor's demise to Australia’s housing crisis'.

This research program examines the greater Sydney area in the 20th and 21st centuries and the greater Angkor area in the 13th and 14th centuries.

It will develop a cross-disciplinary framework for analysis, modelling and design of adaptive urban systems resilient to stresses, using advanced techniques from complex systems, network science, agent-based computational modelling, and dynamical systems.

Outcomes will include precise and efficient methods for forecasting critical dynamics during urban transformation, a computational model (including scaling of settlement sizes), calibrated to Australian datasets, and a software simulator of possible interventions.

Collaborators:

  • Unravelling a rainbow: Complex systems methods to transform sleep research, Dr Ben Fulcher
  • A systems approach to maximising crop pollination using companion flowers, Associate Professor Tanya Latty

  • Digital sovereignty and colonialisms in the Russian-Ukrainian war, Dr Olga Boichak

C3 symposia

Every two years, we host a symposium that brings together leading international scholars to discuss the latest in complex systems research.

The Complexity, Criticality and Computation (C3) symposia bring to light emerging research and ideas about complex systems. In particular, we explore the relationship between three key concepts:

A system can be thought of as complex if its dynamics cannot be easily predicted, or explained, as a linear summation of the individual dynamics of its components.

There is a growing awareness that complexity is strongly related to criticality, which is the behaviour of dynamical spatiotemporal systems at an order or disorder phase transition where scale invariance prevails.

Complex systems can also be viewed as distributed information-processing systems. Global systems behaviour (e.g cell behaviour resultant from gene regulatory networks) emerges as the result of the local interaction of individuals - can these interactions be seen as a generic computational process? 

Previous symposia

Program:

The 2023 Complexity, Criticality and Computation (C3) Symposium was held at the University of Queensland's Heron Island Research Station. The symposium focused on three key questions: the universality of physical and biological principles, the emergence of consciousness and language, and the role of physical constraints in the rise and fall of civilisations.

Detailed program (pdf, 159kb)

Program:

The 2019 C3 Symposium focussed on two broad themes: Sociophysics and Biocomplexity, across a diverse range of topics studied in Complex Systems.

Detailed program (pdf, 103KB)

Sponsors and partners:

Program:

The 2017 C3 Symposium focussed on two broad themes: Sociophysics and Biocomplexity, across a diverse range of topics studied in Complex Systems.

Detailed program (pdf, 102KB)

Sponsors and partners:

Details to be announced.

C3 camps

Our camps are designed to develop the knowledge and skills required to study complex systems. Humans are typically inclined to use reductionist logic. To understand how a system would behave overall, or to test whether a human-made system works as it was intended to, we put it through a series of short, discrete scenarios, expecting a ‘correct' response to each scenario.

However, complex systems do not lend themselves to short, discrete scenarios. Not all scenarios have clear endings or known, correct answers. The study of complex systems is about understanding indirect effects. 

Program:

The camp included 2 days across multiple scales, from the game of Go to galaxy morphology. Each topic was covered over a two-hour tutorial, delivered by complex systems experts from the Centre for Complex Systems and overseas.

Detailed program (pdf, 55KB)

Program:

A 5-day camp, which covered three research themes; models for complex systems, complex biological systems and complex adaptive systems. Each theme was covered in a number of three-hour tutorials, delivered by complex systems experts from the Centre for Complex Systems and overseas.

Detailed program (pdf, 61KB)

Details to be announced.

Our people

  • Director: Professor Mikhail Prokopenko, School of Civil Engineering, Faculty of Engineering
  • Deputy Director: Associate Professor Pulin Gong, School of Physics, Faculty of Science
  • Deputy Director: Associate Professor Joseph Lizier, School of Engineering, Faculty of Engineering
  • Associate Professor Eduardo Altmann, School of Mathematics and Statistics, Faculty of Science
  • Dr Tanya Latty, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Science
  • Dr Somwrita Sarkar, Sydney School of Architecture, Design and Planning
  • Professor Paul Griffiths, Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
  • Professor Zdenka Kuncic, School of Physics, Faculty of Science
  • Professor Peter Robinson, School of Physics, Faculty of Science
  • Professor Albert Zomaya, School of Computer Science, Faculty of Engineering

Contact us

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Professor Mikhail Prokopenko 

Email: mikhail.prokopenko@sydney.edu.au

Phone: +61 2 9351 7569

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