Université de Cergy-Pontoise,  May 23rd and 24th 2018

Many unsolved social and natural problems of interest cannot be confined to mono-disciplinary research. They demand instead an interdisciplinary approach where the experiences issued from different domains contribute to create new knowledge.

There is a growing community of scientists from very different disciplines, whose members agree on the fact that they share the objects of study and/or the tools and methods they apply. These researches deal, in general, with problems that can be thought in terms of the dynamics of a set of interacting elements. As a result of such dynamics, different emergent properties, which can hardly – if not at all- be inferred from the properties of the elements of the system under study, are observed. Such systems, known as Complex Systems, usually present nonlinear interactions, show multi-scale phenomena and feedback loops.

Complex systems are ubiquitous; they involve different fields of knowledge and appear at different scales. From the gene-protein networks, to the level of the organism and further on, to the social and/or economic organizations, living beings provide excellent examples of complexity.

The required interdisciplinary approach which, little by little, spreads over the scientific community is not straightforward. It demands a strong effort of communication in order to adapt the way in which each community formulates their problems of interest, and chooses the tools to study them.

The aim of this conference is to contribute to the construction of this new approach to the study of complex problems in each of the involved disciplines. It is an international and interdisciplinary conference where international specialists working in complexity will join their colleagues form Parisian region.

The scope of the conference is intentionally large, covering topics, which range from the foundations of complex systems theory to its applications to economic socio-technical systems.

A pedagogic effort will be required from all the speakers so as to account for the diversity of the public which involves different disciplines and also different levels, from master and PhD students to confirmed researchers.

For information about  the keynote speakers see here

This conference is organized with the support of Labex MME-DII, and the  Institut for Advanced Studies of the Paris Seine University