The goal of my research program is to improve our understanding about highly integrated natural and human processes. Within the context of Land-System Science, I seek to understand how natural and human systems interact through feedback mechanisms and affect land management choices among humans and ecosystem (e.g., carbon storage) and biophysical processes (e.g., erosion) in natural systems. One component of this program involves finding novel methods for data collection (e.g., unmanned aerial vehicles) that can be used to calibrate and validate models of natural systems at the resolution of decision makers. Another component of this program involves the design and construction of agent-based models to formalize our understanding of human decisions and their interaction with their environment in computer code. The most exciting, and remaining part, is coupling these two components together so that we may not only quantify the impact of representing their coupling, but more importantly to assess the impacts of changing climate, technology, and policy on human well-being, patterns of land use and land management, and ecological and biophysical aspects of our environment.

To achieve this overarching goal, my students and I conduct fieldwork that involves the use of state-of-the-art unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in combination with ground-based light detection and ranging (LiDAR) equipment, RTK global positioning system (GPS) receivers, weather and soil sensors, and a host of different types of manual measurements. We bring these data together to make methodological advancements and benchmark novel equipment to justify its use in the calibration and validation of models of natural and human processes. By conducting fieldwork at high spatial resolutions (e.g., parcel level) we are able to couple our representation of natural system processes at the scale at which human actors make decisions and improve our understanding about how they react to changes and affect our environment.

Volker Grimm currently works at the Department of Ecological Modelling, Helmholtz-Zentrum für Umweltforschung. Volker does research in ecology and biodiversity research.

I am Professor of Management at Paris School of Business and have held positions at the University of Southern Denmark, Bournemouth University (UK), University of Wisconsin (US), and at the University of Insubria (Italy). My current research efforts are on socially-based decision making, agent-based modeling, cognitive processes in organizations and socially responsible behavior in organizations. With a coauthor network of 50 colleagues located in over 10 different countries, I have published 126 (as of 2025) among articles, book chapters, and books. The monograph Computational organizational cognition (2021, Emerald), and the edited Agent-Based Simulation of Organizational Behavior with M. Neumann (2016, Springer Nature) specifically target computational simulation research in the social sciences. The book How do I Develop an Agent-Based Model? (2022, Elgar) is the first specifically written for business and management scholars.

Andrew J. Collins, Ph.D., is an associate professor at Old Dominion University in the Department of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering. He has a Ph.D. in Operations Research from the University of Southampton, and his undergraduate degree in Mathematics was from the University of Oxford. He has published over 80 peer-review articles. He has been the Principal Investigator on projects funded to the amount of approximately $5 million. Dr. Collins has developed several research simulations including an award-winning investigation into the foreclosure contagion that incorporated social networks.

Christophe Le Page currently works at the Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement (CIRAD). Christophe does research on participatory modelling of the interactions between agriculture and the environment, focusing more specifically on the relationships among stakeholders about the management of natural renewable resources. Christophe is designing and using interactive agent-based simulation and role-playing games. He is an active member of the Companion Modelling research group.

Andrew Bell (Ph.D. 2010, Michigan) was a Research Fellow in the Environment and Production Technology Division at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in Washington, DC. His current research portfolio focuses on the use of field instruments – such as discrete choice experiments, framed field experiments, randomized control trials – to inform behavior in agent-based models of coupled human-natural systems. Prior to this post, Andrew was a post-doctoral research fellow at The Earth Institute at Columbia University, where he focused on developing applications for paleo-climate histories.