
Core team:
Peter S. Dodds
Center Director
Peter Sheridan Dodds
Director, Vermont Complex Systems Center
Peter's research focuses on system-level, big data problems in many areas including language and stories, sociotechnical systems, Earth sciences, biology, and ecology. Peter has created (and constantly evolves) a series of complex systems courses starting with Principles of Complex Systems. He co-runs the Computational Story Lab and the MassMutual Center of Excellence in Complex Systems and Data Science with Chris Danforth.
Selected Papers
- Hahahahaha, Duuuuude, Yeeessss!: A two-parameter characterization of stretchable words and the dynamics of mistypings and misspellings. Chris Danforth, Peter Sheridan Dodds, Tyler Gray. Preprint, 2019. [pdf] [arXiv] [online appendices]
- The shocklet transform: A decomposition method for the identification of local, mechanism-driven dynamics in sociotechnical time series. Thayer Alshaabi, Chris Danforth, Peter Sheridan Dodds, David Dewhurst, Michael Arnold, Joshua Minot, Dilan Kiley. Preprint, 2019. [pdf] [arXiv]
- Chimera States and Seizures in a Mouse Neuronal Model. Chris Danforth, Peter Sheridan Dodds, Henry Mitchell, Matthew Mahoney. Preprint, 2019. [pdf] [arXiv]
- Visitors to urban greenspace have higher sentiment and lower negativity on Twitter. Aaron Schwartz, Peter Sheridan Dodds, Jarlath O'Neil-Dunne, Chris Danforth, Taylor Ricketts. People and Nature, , , 2019. [pdf] [journal page] [arXiv]
Selected Press
- Visiting a park boosts your happiness like Christmas morning, new research shows. Washington Post. 2019-08-21 [link]
- Ups and Downs, Or how to graph a book. Lapham's Quarterly. 2019-07-18 [link]
- What Was the Happiest Day on the Internet This Decade? 2019-03-06 [link]
- Tweets suggest a visit to the park may lift the mood. Cosmos. 2018-08-10 [link]
Social Profiles
×Juniper L. Lovato
Program Director
×Juniper L. Lovato
Director of Partnerships and External Programs, Vermont Complex Systems Center, UVM
Juniper Lovato is the Director of partnerships and external programs at the Vermont Complex Systems Center at UVM where she organizes Complex Systems programs and thinks about multi-scale data ethics. Previously, she was the Director of Education for the Santa Fe Institute in Santa Fe, New Mexico where she was born and raised (on a rural family compound populated by hippies and Spanish/Swedish folk musicians, yup they had a dance pavilion). In her free time she makes/supports makerspaces.
Current Research Interests: Multi-Scale Data Ethics, Distributed Consent, Ethics of Science and Technology, Complex Systems, Data Science, Online Counter-publics
Selected Papers
- Distributed consent and its impact on privacy and observability in social networks. Juniper Lovato, Antoine Allard, Randall Harp, Laurent Hébert-Dufresne. 2020 arXiv.org (pre-print)
Selected Press
- ProfTalk Podcast – OCEAN Project [link]
- UVM Gets $1 Million From Google For Open Source Research [link]
- A Very Special Network Science Conference in Beautiful Burlington, Vermont [link]
- Generator to Present Big Thinkers in 'Reckless Ideas' Series [link]
- MAKE Santa Fe helps budding entrepreneurs dream big [link]
Selected Fun Things
- Current Boards: Network Science Society, MAKE Santa Fe, US Northeast Chapter of the Complex Systems Society, Generator Makerspace, Vermont Computer Science Alliance
- Current Partners: Google Open Source, MassMutual
- 2020 Programs: NERCCS School, NET-COVID Workshop, ALife 2020 Conference, Complex Networks Winter Workshop, OCEAN Workshop, Dynamics of Interacting Contagions Workshop
- Medium blog on how to run online conferences [link]
More Info
Jane Adams
Data Viz Artist
×Jane Adams
University of Vermont and MassMutual Center of Excellence
MassMutual Center of Excellence and the Vermont Complex Systems Center, Data Visualization Artist
Adams collaborates with fellow team members at the Vermont Complex Systems Center to make the complex comprehensible through engaging visualizations. As a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Emergent Media student at Champlain College, her graduate thesis work celebrates the relationship between science and the arts through trans-disciplinary graphical explorations of holonic and cybernetic systems. Jane also has a passion for exhibit designs that support participatory culture.
Selected Papers
- How the world's collective attention is being paid to a pandemic: COVID-19 related 1-gram time series for 24 languages on Twitter. Thayer Alshaabi, JR Minot, MV Arnold, Jane Lydia Adams, David Rushing Dewhurst, Andrew J Reagan, Roby Muhamad, Christopher M Danforth, Peter Sheridan Dodds. arXiv preprint [arXiv]
- The growing echo chamber of social media: Measuring temporal and social contagion dynamics for over 150 languages on Twitter for 2009--2020. Thayer Alshaabi, David R Dewhurst, Joshua R Minot, Michael V Arnold, Jane L Adams, Christopher M Danforth, Peter Sheridan Dodds. arXiv preprint [arXiv]
- Allotaxonometry and rank-turbulence divergence: A universal instrument for comparing complex systems. Peter Sheridan Dodds, Joshua R Minot, Michael V Arnold, Thayer Alshaabi, Jane Lydia Adams, David Rushing Dewhurst, Tyler J Gray, Morgan R Frank, Andrew J Reagan, Christopher M Danforth. arXiv preprint. [arXiv]
- Fame and Ultrafame: Measuring and comparing daily levels ofbeing talked about'for United States' presidents, their rivals, God, countries, and K-pop. Peter Sheridan Dodds, Joshua R Minot, Michael V Arnold, Thayer Alshaabi, Jane Lydia Adams, David Rushing Dewhurst, Andrew J Reagan, Christopher M Danforth. arXiv preprint. [arXiv]
Selected Press
- Coming Soon
Selected Fun Things
- [COMING SOON] StoryWrangler: Twitter Ngram Timeseries Search. An API and UI for querying words and phrases from the Twittersphere
- Sirius: Python Package for Exploratory Analysis of High-Dimensional Data. An open source tool to generate network visualizations of discrete and continuous features, with edges weighted by mutual information
- Apocalypse Diet: Aquaponic Diorama. Micro-plumbing and wiring conceptual dollhouse imagining a sustainable food future, part of a group show featuring emerging eco-artists at Burlington City Arts (BCA) Gallery
More Info
Melissa Rubinchuk
Coordinator
×Melissa Rubinchuk
Center Coordinator
Contact: melissa.rubinchuk@uvm.edu
Vermont Complex Systems Center, Center Coordinator
Melissa has an educational background in marine science and real life experience in off-grid sustainable living. After moving to Vermont almost 9 years ago from the Bahamas, she began a residential and commercial property management business here in Burlington. She brings business, customer service, education, and entrepreneurial experience to her position coordinating the day-to-day logistics and operations of the MassMutual Center of Excellence and the Vermont Complex Systems Center.
Mads Almassalkhi
Core Faculty
×Mads Almassalkhi
University of Vermont, College of Engineering & Mathematical Sciences, Assistant Professor, Electrical Engineering
Almassalkhi's research interests lie at the intersection of power systems, optimization, and controls. Almassalkhi works on developing novel feedback and optimization algorithms that improve resilience of power systems, which is increasingly more important as power systems are operating closer and closer to their limits.
Selected Papers
- Systems and methods for randomized, packet-based power management of conditionally-controlled loads and bi-directional distributed energy storage systems. Jeff Frolik, Paul Hines, Mads R. Almassalkhi. Google Patents 2018.[link]
- Aggregate modeling and coordination of diverse energy resources under packetized energy management. Luis Duffaut Espinosa, Mads R. Almassalkhi, Paul Hines, Jeff Frolik. Decision and Control (CDC), 2017 IEEE 56th Annual Conference on, 1394-1400, , 2017. [link]
- Packetized energy management: asynchronous and anonymous coordination of thermostatically controlled loads. Mads R. Almassalkhi, Jeff Frolik, Paul Hines. American Control Conference (ACC), 2017, 1431-1437, , 2017. [link]
- Towards a macromodel for Packetized Energy Management of resistive water heaters.Luis Duffaut Espinosa, Mads R. Almassalkhi, Paul Hines, Shoeib Heydari, Jeff Frolik. Information Sciences and Systems (CISS), 2017 51st Annual Conference on, 1-6, , 2017. [link]
Selected Press
- Vermont Start-Up's Small Packets a Big Deal for Energy Industry. Newswise. 2018-06-05 [link]
Selected Fun Things
- Coming Soon
More Info
James Bagrow
Core Faculty
×James Bagrow
Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Assistant Professor, UVM
Bagrow's interests include: Complex Networks (community detection, social modeling and human dynamics, statistical phenomena, graph similarity and isomorphism), Statistical Physics (non-equilibrium methods, phase transitions, percolation, interacting particle systems, spin glasses), and Optimization(glassy techniques such as simulated/quantum annealing, (non-gradient) minimization of noisy objective functions).
Selected Papers
- Complex contagion features without social reinforcement in a model of social information flow. Tyson Pond, Saranzaya Magsarjav, Tobin South, Lewis Mitchell, James P Bagrow. Entropy. 2020 [link]
- Efficient crowdsourcing of crowd-generated microtasks. Abigail Hotaling, James P Bagrow. arXiv preprint 2019 [link]
- An information-theoretic, all-scales approach to comparing networks. James P Bagrow, Erik M Bollt. Applied Network Science 2019 [link]
- Creativity in dynamic networks: How divergent thinking is impacted by one's choice of peers. Raiyan Abdul Baten, Daryl Bagley, Ashely Tenesaca, Famous Clark, James P Bagrow, Gourab Ghoshal, Mohammed Ehsan Hoque. arXiv preprint 2019 [link]
- Information flow reveals prediction limits in online social activity. James P Bagrow, Xipei Liu, Lewis Mitchell. Nature human behaviour 2019 [link]
Selected Press
Selected Fun Things
- Coming Soon
More Info
Joshua Bongard
Core Faculty
×Joshua Bongard
Department of Computer Science, Professor, UVM
Bongard's work focuses on understanding the general nature of cognition, regardless of whether it is found in humans, animals or robots. This unique approach focuses on the role that morphology and evolution plays in cognition. Addressing these questions has taken him into the fields of biology, psychology, engineering and computer science.
Selected Papers
- Death and progress: How evolvability is influenced by intrinsic mortality. Frank Veenstra, Pablo González de Prado Salas, Kasper Stoy, Josh Bongard, Sebastian Risi. Artificial Life. 2020 [link]
- A scalable pipeline for designing reconfigurable organisms. Sam Kriegman, Douglas Blackiston, Michael Levin, Josh Bongard. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 2020. [link]
- Scalable sim-to-real transfer of soft robot designs. Sam Kriegman, Amir Mohammadi Nasab, Dylan Shah, Hannah Steele, Gabrielle Branin, Michael Levin, Josh Bongard, Rebecca Kramer-Bottiglio. arXiv preprint 2019. [link]
- Machine behaviour. Iyad Rahwan, Manuel Cebrian, Nick Obradovich, Josh Bongard, Jean-François Bonnefon, Cynthia Breazeal, Jacob W Crandall, Nicholas A Christakis, Iain D Couzin, Matthew O Jackson, Nicholas R Jennings, Ece Kamar, Isabel M Kloumann, Hugo Larochelle, David Lazer, Richard McElreath, Alan Mislove, David C Parkes, Margaret E Roberts, Azim Shariff, Joshua B Tenenbaum, Michael Wellman. Nature Publishing Group 2019 [link]
Selected Press
- Meet the Xenobots, Virtual Creatures Brought to Life. 2020. New York Times [link]
- Behold the xenobots – part frog, part robot. But are they alive? 2020. Christian Science Monitor. [link]
- Smart, But Not Dangerous: Striking The Right Balance On Machines That Think. Vermont Public Radio. 2018-03-09. [link]
- Reddit Brings a UVM Robotics Class to the World. Vermont's Independent Voice. 2016-06-25. [link]
Selected Fun Things
- Xenobots!!
- The Zoo
More Info
Nicholas Cheney
Core Faculty
×Nicholas Cheney
Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Vermont
I direct the UVM Neurobotics Lab, an interdisciplinary group of thinkers and do-ers who draw inspiration from biological systems to design machine learning algorithms for artificial neural networks. We focus on creating more flexible, scalable, and context-aware robots and decision-making systems through a variety of techniques like deep learning, reinforcement learning, evolutionary adaptation, development, and meta-learning.
In addition to our role as an algorithm factory, our lab also strives to use machine learning to accelerate science -- connecting with outstanding researchers and practitioners from various fields (like medicine, agriculture, and environmental science) to collectively make a positive impact on our society.
Though I thoroughly enjoy being an interdisciplinary being, I am glad to have found a home in the Vermont Complex Systems Center. My path to get here was incredibly fun and highlights my wide variety of academic interests and passion for bringing them together, most notably during a PhD in Computational Biology and Biological Statistics at Cornell, advised by Hod Lipson & Steve Strogatz.
Selected Papers
- Using experimental gaming simulations to elicit risk mitigation behavioral strategies for agricultural disease management. Eric M Clark, Scott C Merrill, Luke Trinity, Gabriela Bucini, Nicholas Cheney, Ollin Langle-Chimal, Trisha Shrum, Christopher Koliba, Asim Zia, Julia M Smith. Public Library of Science 2020. [link]
- Learning to continually learn. Shawn Beaulieu, Lapo Frati, Thomas Miconi, Joel Lehman, Kenneth O Stanley, Jeff Clune, Nick Cheney arXiv preprint 2020 [link]
- Unmet needs and behaviour during the Ebola response in Sierra Leone: a retrospective, mixed-methods analysis of community feedback from the Social Mobilization Action Consortium. Laura A Skrip, Jamie Bedson, Sharon Abramowitz, Mohammed B Jalloh, Saiku Bah, Mohamed F Jalloh, Ollin Demian Langle-Chimal, Nicholas Cheney, Laurent Hébert-Dufresne, Benjamin M Althouse 2020 The Lancet Planetary Health. [link]
- Embodiment dictates learnability in neural controllers. Joshua Powers, Ryan Grindle, Sam Kriegman, Lapo Frati, Nick Cheney, Josh Bongard. arXiv preprint 2019 [link]
Selected Press
- Coming Soon
Selected Fun Things
- Coming Soon
More Info
Chris Danforth
Core Faculty
×Chris Danforth
Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Flint Professor of Mathematical, Natural, and Technical Sciences, UVM
Chris is an applied mathematician interested in modeling a variety of physical, biological, and social phenomenon. He has applied principles of chaos theory to improve weather forecasts as a member of the Mathematics and Climate Research Network, and developed a real-time remote sensor of global happiness using messages from Twitter: the Hedonometer. Danforth co-runs the Computational Story Lab with Peter Dodds.
Selected Papers
- Hahahahaha, Duuuuude, Yeeessss!: A two-parameter characterization of stretchable words and the dynamics of mistypings and misspellings. Chris Danforth, Peter Sheridan Dodds, Tyler Gray. Preprint, 2019. [pdf] [arXiv] [online appendices]
- The shocklet transform: A decomposition method for the identification of local, mechanism-driven dynamics in sociotechnical time series. Thayer Alshaabi, Chris Danforth, Peter Sheridan Dodds, David Dewhurst, Michael Arnold, Joshua Minot, Dilan Kiley. Preprint, 2019. [pdf] [arXiv]
- Chimera States and Seizures in a Mouse Neuronal Model. Chris Danforth, Peter Sheridan Dodds, Henry Mitchell, Matthew Mahoney. Preprint, 2019. [pdf] [arXiv]
- Visitors to urban greenspace have higher sentiment and lower negativity on Twitter. Aaron Schwartz, Peter Sheridan Dodds, Jarlath O'Neil-Dunne, Chris Danforth, Taylor Ricketts. People and Nature, , , 2019. [pdf] [journal page] [arXiv]
Selected Press
- Visiting a park boosts your happiness like Christmas morning, new research shows. Washington Post. 2019-08-21 [link]
- Ups and Downs, Or how to graph a book. Lapham's Quarterly. 2019-07-18 [link]
- What Was the Happiest Day on the Internet This Decade? 2019-03-06 [link]
- Tweets suggest a visit to the park may lift the mood. Cosmos. 2018-08-10 [link]
Selected Fun Things
- Coming Soon
More Info
Maggie Eppstein
Core Faculty
×Margaret (Maggie) Eppstein
Department of Computer Science, Research Professor in Computer Science, UVM
Eppstein’s research interests involve developing and applying complex systems methods (including evolutionary and agent-based computation, artificial neural networks, and complex network methods) to problems in a variety of biological, environmental, technological, and sociological domains.
Selected Papers
- A tandem evolutionary algorithm for identifying causal rules from complex data. John P Hanley, Donna M Rizzo, Jeffrey S Buzas, Margaret J Eppstein. Evolutionary computation 2020 [link]
- Story Arcs in Serious Illness: Natural Language Processing features of Palliative Care Conversations. Lindsay Ross, Christopher M Danforth, Margaret J Eppstein, Laurence A Clarfeld, Brigitte N Durieux, Cailin J Gramling, Laura Hirsch, Donna M Rizzo, Robert Gramling 2019 Elsevier [link]
- Group-Testing on Hypergraphs with Variable-Cost Tests: A Power Systems Case. Laurence A Clarfeld, Margaret J Eppstein 2019 arXiv preprint [link]
- Genetic Background Modifies the Topography of a Fitness Landscape, Influencing the Dynamics of Adaptive Evolution. C Brandon Ogbunugafor, Margaret J Eppstein. IEEE Access 2019 [link]
Selected Press
- Coming soon
Selected Fun Things
- Coming Soon
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Hugh Garavan
Core Faculty
×Hugh Garavan
Department of Psychology/Psychiatry, Associate Professor, UVM
Hugh's research applies functional brain imaging to understanding human cognition. He has a specific interest in the cognitive control functions performed by the prefrontal cortex and how their dysfunction might be relevant for clinical conditions such as addiction.
Selected Papers
- Recruiting the ABCD sample: design considerations and procedures. Hugh Garavan, Hauke Bartsch, Kevin Conway, A. Decastro, et al.. Developmental cognitive neuroscience, 16-22, 32, 2018. [link]
- Methylation in OTX2 and Related Genes, Maltreatment, and Depression in Children. Joan Kaufman, Nicholas Wymbs, Janitza Montalvo-Ortiz, Catherine Orr, Matthew Albaugh, Robert Althoff, Hugh Garavan, et al.. Neuropsychopharmacology, 2018. [link]
- The Initiation of Cannabis Use in Adolescence is Predicted by Sex‐Specific Psychosocial and Neurobiological Features. Philip Spechler, Nicholas Allgaier, Bader Chaarani, Robert Whelan, Richard Watts, Catherine Orr, Matthew Albaugh, Hugh Garavan, et al.. European journal of neuroscience, 2018. [link]
- Modulation of orbitofrontal-striatal reward activity by dopaminergic functional polymorphisms contributes to a predisposition to alcohol misuse in early adolescence. Travis Baker, Hugh Garavan, Arun Bokde, Tobias Banaschewski, Frauke Nees, Herta Flor, Anna Cattrell, Gunter Schumann, Natalie Castellanos-Ryan, et al.. Psychological Medicine, ,2018. [link]
Selected Press
- Huge study of teen brains could reveal roots of mental illness, impacts of drug abuse. Science. 2018-01-03 [link]
Selected Fun Things
- Coming Soon
More Info
Bill Gibson
Core Faculty
×Bill Gibson
Department of Economics, Professor, UVM
Dr. Gibson's main interest, in both his teaching and research, is building and simulating macroeconomic models for developing countries. As a second area of interest is NASA, space policy and the aerospace industry. This is an outgrowth of one of the principals themes running throughout his teaching and his research, the proper relationship between the private and public sectors.
Selected Papers
- Intermediation, Money Creation, and Keynesian Macrodynamics in Multi-Agent Systems.Bill Gibson, Mark Setterfield. Review of Political Economy, 2018. [link]
- Real and financial crises in the Keynes-Kalecki structuralist model: An agent-based approach.Bill Gibson, Mark Setterfield. Metroeconomica, 2018. [link]
Selected Press
- coming soon
Selected Fun Things
- Coming Soon
More Info
Randall Harp
Core Faculty
×Randall Harp
Department of Philosophy, Associate Professor, UVM
I am a professor of philosophy at the University of Vermont. My main research interests are in the philosophy of action (particularly collective action, free will, and decision theory) and in the philosophy of social science. My research engages with questions of the proper way to characterize individual versus collective goals, and of the proper way for a model of deliberation to incorporate these goals such that we can account for collective action. I am also interested in the explanatory powers of collective entities (including questions of how much reduction can be had of those collective entities, and of the form that the reduction takes). My other research interests include the explanatory adequacy of rational choice models of human agency, and of the nature of explanation in the behavioral sciences.
Selected Papers
- Randall Harp (2017). Social Ontology: Collective Intentionality and Group Agents, written by Raimo Tuomela. Journal of Moral Philosophy. [link]
- Randall Harp (2017). Collective Action and Rational Choice Explanations. Journal of Philosophical Research. [link]
- Randall Harp, Terence Cuneo (2017). Reid on the Autonomy of Ethics: From Active Power to Moral Nonnaturalism. J of the Am Philos Assoc. [link]
- Terence Cuneo, Randall Harp (2017). Thomas Reid. The Routledge Companion to Free Will. [link]
Selected Press
Selected Fun Things
- Coming Soon
More Info
L Hébert-Dufresne
Core Faculty
×Laurent Hébert-Dufresne
Computer Science, Assistant Professor, UVM
Laurent studies the interaction of structure and dynamics. His research involves network theory, statistical physics and nonlinear dynamics along with their applications in epidemiology, ecology, biology, and sociology. Recent projects include comparing complex networks of different nature, the coevolution of human behavior and infectious diseases, understanding the role of forest shape in determining stability of tropical forests, as well as the impact of echo chambers in political discussions.
Selected Papers
- The effectiveness of contact tracing in heterogeneous networks. Sadamori Kojaku, Laurent Hébert-Dufresne, Yong-Yeol Ahn arXiv preprint 2020 [link]
- Macroscopic patterns of interacting contagions are indistinguishable from social reinforcement. Laurent Hébert-Dufresne, Samuel V Scarpino, Jean-Gabriel Young. Nature. [link]
- Social confinement and mesoscopic localization of epidemics on networks. Guillaume St-Onge, Vincent Thibeault, Antoine Allard, Louis J Dubé, Laurent Hébert-Dufresne arXiv preprint [link]
- Beyond R0: the importance of contact tracing when predicting epidemics. Laurent Hébert-Dufresne, Benjamin M Althouse, Samuel V Scarpino, Antoine Allard. arXiv preprint [link]
Selected Press
- WIRED. No, a Border Wall Won't Stop Coronavirus. [link]
- cnet: How memes and social media shape the spread of coronavirus. [link]
- Science News: How large a gathering is too large during the coronavirus pandemic? [link]
- UVM Gets $1 Million From Google For Open Source Research [link]
- Figaro: L’épidémie s’essouffle, l’espoir [link]
Selected Fun Things
- Introduction to network epidemiology, Net-COVID (2020) [YouTube video]
- Complexity podcast from the Santa Fe Institute (2020) [podcast link]
- Reckless Idea public lecture, Burlington VT (2018) [Youtube video]
More Info
Paul Hines
Core Faculty
×Paul Hines
School of Engineering, Associate Professor, UVM
Hines's work broadly focuses on finding ways to make electric energy more reliable, more affordable, with less environmental impact. Particular topics of interest include understanding the mechanisms by which small problems in the power grid become large blackouts, identifying and mitigating the stresses caused by large amounts of electric vehicle charging, and quantifying the impact of high penetrations of wind/solar on electricity systems.
Selected Papers
- Laurence A. Clarfeld, Paul D.H. Hines, Eric M. Hernandez, Margaret J. Eppstein, Risk of Cascading Blackouts Given Correlated Component Outages IEEE Transactions on Network Science and Engineering, in press. [link]
- Helen Lo, Seth Blumsack, Paul Hines, and Sean Meyn, Electricity rates for the zero marginal cost grid, The Electricity Journal, vol. 32, pp. 39-43, 2019. [link]
- Sam Chevalier and Paul Hines, Mitigating the Risk of Voltage Collapse using Statistical Measures from PMU Data IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, vol. 34, no. 1, pp. 120 - 128, 2019. [link]
- Tiffany Rounds, Josh Bongard, Paul Hines, and Jean Harvey, A crowdsourcing approach to understand weight and weight loss in men Preventive Medicine Reports, vol. 13, pp. 224–228, Mar 2019. [link]
Selected Press
Selected Fun Things
- Visualizing cascading failures [YouTube link]
- MechGrid: A Mechanical Power Grid Simulator [YouTube video]
- TEDxUVM, 2012: big SCALE...big FAIL? [video link]
More Info
Meredith Niles
Core Faculty
×Meredith Niles
Meredith Niles is an assistant professor in the Department of Nutrition and Food Sciences and the Food Systems Program at the University of Vermont. Her research focuses on sustainable food security from a behavioral science and policy perspective primarily using large datasets. Specifically, she explores the adoption of sustainable practices by farmers, how climate change and other extreme events (i.e. COVID-19) will affect food systems and food access, and potential food and agriculture pathways for improving health and environmental outcomes. Meredith holds a B.A in political science with honors in environmental studies from The Catholic University of America and a PhD in ecology with a focus on human ecology and environmental policy from the University of California- Davis. She was a Sustainability Science post-doctorate fellow at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. Prior to her academic career she worked in public health at the United States Department of State on the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), and several food/environment non-profits. She is passionate about making academic research more publicly available through advocating for open access and science, serving on the board of directors since 2014 for the Public Library of Science (PLOS), one of the world’s largest non-profit open access academic publishers.
Selected Papers
- Niles M.T., Emery, B.F., Wiltshire, S., Fischer, B., Ricketts, T., Brown, M. Climate effects on child diet diversity across low and middle-income countries. Accepted at Environmental Research Letters.
- Niles, M.T., Bertmann, F., Belarmino, E., Wentworth, T., Biehl, E., Neff, R.A. (2020). The early food insecurity impacts of COVID-19. Nutrients. 12(7), 2096
- Cooper, M., Brown. M.E., Niles, M.T., Mahmoud, M. (2020). Text mining the food security literature reveals substantial spatial bias and thematic broadening over time. Global Food Security. 26, 100392. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gfs.2020.100392
- Niles M.T., Hammond-Wagner, C. The carrot or the stick? (2019). California farmer support of incentive and regulatory groundwater management policies. Environmental Research Communications. 1:4. 045001. https://doi.org/10.1088/2515-7620/ab1778
- Niles, M.T., Emery, B.F., Reagan, A., Dodds, P.S., Danforth, C. (2019). Social media usage patterns during natural hazards. PLOS ONE. 14(2): e0210484. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0210484
- Niles, M.T., Weiner, S., Schattman, R., Roesch-McNally, G., Reyes, J. (2019). Seeing isn’t always believing: Crop loss and climate change perceptions among farm advisors. Environmental Research Letters. 14:4. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aafbb6
- Conrad, Z., Niles, M.T., Neher, D., Roy, E., Tichenor, N., Jahns, L. (2018). Relationship between food waste, diet quality, and environmental sustainability. PLOS ONE. 13(4): e0195405 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0195405
- Niles, M.T. and Brown, M. (2017). A multi-country assessment of factors related to smallholder food security in varying rainfall conditions. Scientific Reports. 7: 16277. doi:10.1038/s41598-017-16282-9
Selected Press
- National Public Radio, All Things Considered. November 2020. Farmers are Warming Up to the Fight Against Climate Change. (https://www.npr.org/2020/11/20/936603967/farmers-are-warming-up-to-the-fight-against-climate-change)
- Burlington Free Press, November 2020. Vermonters need food help in record numbers during COVID-19 pandemic, study finds https://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/news/2020/11/24/vt-food-bank-assistance-covid-19-coronavirus-vermont-study-finds-one-third-people-need-help/6407389002/
- New York Times, September 8, 2019. The world wastes tons of food. A grocery happy hour is one answer. (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/08/business/food-waste-climate-change.html?module=inline )
- CBS News, April 18, 2018. American Waste Nearly a Pound of Food Each Day (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/americans-waste-nearly-a-pound-of-food-each-per-day-study-finds/ )
- Washington Post, April 18, 2018. The staggering environmental footprint of all the food that we just throw in the trash https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2018/04/18/americans-waste-about-a-quarter-of-the-food-they-buy-and-the-environmental-consequences-are-staggering/
Selected Fun Things
- Visualizing cascading failures [YouTube link]
- MechGrid: A Mechanical Power Grid Simulator [YouTube video]
- TEDxUVM, 2012: big SCALE...big FAIL? [video link]
More Info
J O'Neil-Dunne
Core Faculty
×Jarlath P.M. O'Neil-Dunne
Spatial Analysis Laboratory, Director, UVM
Jarlath O’Neil-Dunne is the Director of the University of Vermont’s (UVM) Spatial Analysis Laboratory, and serves in a joint capacity with the USDA Forest Service Research & Development. Over the years his research has focused on the application of geospatial technology to a broad range of natural resource related issues such as environmental justice, wildlife habitat mapping, high-elevation forest decline, land cover change detection, community health, and water quality modeling. Most recently his work has centered on urban ecosystems. The results of his urban tree canopy assessments have been used by dozens of communities to establish tree canopy goals. Jarlath is well known for his expertise in object-based image analysis (OBIA) and speaks regularly on a wide range of geospatial related topics at local, regional, and national conferences. In addition to his research duties Jarlath teaches introductory and advanced courses in geospatial technology. He also oversees the university Trimble Innovation Program. Jarlath earned a Bachelor of Science in Forestry from the University of New Hampshire, a Masters of Science in Water Resources from the University of Vermont, and certificates in hyperspectral image exploitation and joint GIS operations from the National Geospatial Intelligence College. For over a decade he served as an officer in the United States Marine Corps (active & reserve) with tours in East Africa, the Middle East, and East Asia. During the early stages of Operation Iraqi Freedom he co-directed the Marine Corps’ imagery intelligence assets. At UVM he is the faculty/staff advisor for the Veterans Collaborative Organization Jarlath is the recipient of the Vermont Spatial Data Partnership's 2008 Outstanding Achievement Award, a member of the team recognized with the New York State GIS Partnership Award in 2008, and the US Forest Service Northern Research Station's 2010 award for Excellence in Science and Technology. He is currently serving on the AmericaView Board of Directors For more information on Jarlath's research and teaching please following the links on the left, or visit his blog, Letters from the SAL. You can also follow him on Twitter.
Selected Papers
- Coming Soon
Selected Press
- Coming Soon
Selected Fun Things
- Coming Soon
More Info
Jeremiah Onaolapo
Core Faculty
Jeremiah Onaolapo
Assistant Professor, Computer Science, UVM
Research interests
My research interests include honeypots, disinformation campaigns, malicious activity in online accounts, and social network security, among others.
I am an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Vermont. Previously a postdoctoral researcher at Northeastern University's iconic Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Complex (ISEC) and a PhD student at University College London (UCL). I am also affiliated with the iDRAMA Lab.
Social Profiles
×Donna Rizzo
Core Faculty
×Donna Rizzo
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Professor, UVM
My research focuses on the development of new computational tools to improve the understanding of human-induced changes on natural systems and the way we make decisions about natural resources. In 1995, I co-founded a small Vermont business to help speed the diffusion of research and new technologies into environmental practice. Since joining UVM in fall 2002, I have worked on a number of computational approaches to multi-scale environmental problems, including using artificial neural networks to 1) develop maps of discrete spatially-distributed fields (e.g., log-hydraulic conductivity and soil lithology), 2) predict local disease risk indicators from multi-scale weather, land and crop data, 3) image and analyze the parameter structure of subcutaneous connective tissue in humans, 4) predict the shrink/swell of soils and 4) develop a watershed classification system using hierarchical artificial neural networks for diagnosing watershed impairment at multiple scales.
Selected Papers
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Brian Tivnan
Core Faculty
×Brian Tivnan
MITRE Corporation, Chief Engineer
Tivnan, a UVM Complex Systems Center affiliate, is the Burlington site leader and chief engineer in the Modeling & Simulation Department for the MITRE Corporation, a not-for-profit organization that manages federally funded research and development centers, partnering with government sponsors to support their crucial operational missions. His current research interests include the study of conflict and quantitative finance.
Selected Papers
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Puck Rombach
Core Faculty
×Puck Rombach
Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Assistant Professor, UVM
Rombach's research bridges gaps between the pure and applied sides of graph/network theory. Sample areas of interest for Rombach include graph coloring, random graphs, algorithms and complexity, graph representations of matroids, crime network modeling, and core-periphery/centrality detection in networks. Prior to UVM, Rombach was an assistant adjunct professor at UCLA, working with Andrea Bertozzi. Rombach earned her PhD at the University of Oxford in 2013, under the supervision of Mason Porter and Alex Scott.
Selected Papers
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Jean-Gabriel Young
Core Faculty
×Jean-Gabriel Young
Research Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science, UVM
I focus on statistical inference for complex systems and complex networks. I obtained my PhD in Physics from Université Laval, where I was advised by Prof. Louis J. Dubé and Prof. Patrick Desrosiers.
Selected Papers
- Reconstruction of plant–pollinator networks from observational data. J.-G. Young, F. S. Valdovinos and M. E. J. Newman. bioRxiv.org [link]
- Phase transition in the recoverability of network history. J.-G. Young, G. St-Onge, E. Laurence, C. Murphy, L. Hébert-Dufresne and P. Desrosiers. Phys. Rev. X, 9, 041056 (2019) [link]
- Macroscopic patterns of interacting contagions are indistinguishable from social reinforcement. L. Hébert-Dufresne, S. V. Scarpino and J.-G. Young. Nature Physics (2020) [link]
- Improved mutual information measure for classification and community detection. M. E. J. Newman, G. T. Cantwell and J.-G. Young. Phys. Rev. E, 101, 042304 (2020) [link]
Selected Press
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Safwan Wshah
Core Faculty
×Safwan Wshah
Department of Computer Science, Assistant Professor, UVM
Dr. Safwan Wshah is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Vermont. His research interests lie at the intersection of machine learning theory and its applications to healthcare and transportation. He also has broader interests in deep learning, computer vision, data analytics and image processing. Dr. Wshah received his Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from the University at Buffalo in 2012. Prior to joining University of Vermont, Dr. Wshah worked for Xerox and PARC (Palo Alto Research Center)- Xerox company, where he was involved in several projects creating machine learning algorithms for different applications in healthcare, transportation and education fields.
Selected Papers
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Salty
Core Team
×Salty the Sea Otter
The Roboctopus
Core Team
×The Roboctopus
Cephalopod, robot suit enhanced
The Roboctopus is our (secret overlord) joyful mascot. The Roboctopus is a real, non-pantomime octopus inside an advanced robot suit designed for supermarine activities. The Roboctopus is an avid proponent of the sciences of all complex systems, with a personal interest in those found in biology, engineering, the sociotechnocene, distributed computing (neurons in tentacles), big data, and mollusks. The Roboctopus is well adapted to Vermont and enjoys skiing and building Snowboctopuses.
Illustrated by Robert Babboni
Salty & her crew
Core Team
×Salty the Sea Otter
Salty & crew are core collaborators and team members on the OCEAN project.
Illustrated by Robert Babboni