The Center for the Study of Complex Systems (CSCS) is a broadly interdisciplinary program at the University of Michigan designed to encourage and facilitate research and education in the general area of nonlinear, dynamical and adaptive systems. Participating faculty represent nearly every college of the University. The Center is based on the recognition that many different kinds of systems which include self-regulation, feedback or adaptation in their dynamics, may have a common underlying structure despite their apparent differences. Moreover, these deep structural similarities can be exploited to transfer methods of analysis and understanding from one field to another. In addition to developing deeper understandings of specific systems, interdisciplinary approaches should help elucidate the general structure and behavior of complex systems, and move us toward a deeper appreciation of the general nature of such systems.

• Bouncing, Splashing, Stepping and Climbing: Physics, Biology, and Engineering of Complex Interactions
  

  Daniel I. Goldman
  University of California at Berkeley
  Department of Integrative Biology
  Poly-PEDAL Laboratory

  Thursday, January 12
  335 West Hall
  4pm

  Seemingly diverse phenomena like the impact of golf balls in sand traps, robots climbing loose bark, and lizards scurrying on desert dunes all involve a complex interaction of matter (physical and biological) with materials (like sand, mud, leaves, bark) that can display properties of solids and fluids in response to stress. This talk discusses examples from physics and biology that display these features.

  Click here for more details.
• Nobel Symposium
  

  Distinguished UM faculty will discuss the work, impact, and personalities of the 2005 Nobel Laureates in Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature, Peace, and Economics. Each speaker will give a 30-minute presentation geared to a general audience.

  Thursday, December 1 and 8
  4:00-6:00PM
  340 West Hall
  

  Click here for more details.


• A Celebration of John von Neumann
  We are pleased to present this special event to commemorate the 100th birthday of the legendary mathematician John Von Neumann:

  Friday, September 30, 2005
  1:00pm-5:00pm
  Rackham Amphitheater

  Speakers include Marina (von Neumann) Whitman, Doug Hofstadter, George Dyson, and John Horton Conway.
  Click here for more details.
  
  

• IDEAS-IGERT page! Click here to see it now.
  IDEAS is an NSF funded IGERT PhD program for social science students at the University of Michigan's complex systems center (CSCS).
  
  

Note: If you cannot find something in these pages, it may be on the pages of our ancestral organization, the Program for the Study of Complex Systems. If you find something on those old pages that you can't find on the new pages, but which you think should be on the new pages, please contact us.