Anna Sikora is an Associate Professor in the Computer Architecture and Operating System Department at Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB).

She got the BS degree in computer science in 1999 from Technical University of Wroclaw (Poland). She got the MSc in computer science in 2001 and in 2004 the PhD in computer science, both from Autonomous University of Barcelona (Spain).

Since 1999 her investigation is related to parallel and distributed computing. Her current main interests are focused on high performance parallel applications, performance models, automatic performance analysis and dynamic tuning. She has been involved in programming tools for automatic and dynamic performance tuning on cluster and Grid environments, as well as in exa-scale systems.

I am Colombian with passion for social impact. I believe that change starts at the individual, community, local and then global level. I have set my goal in making a better experience to whatever challenges I encounter and monetary systems and governance models is what concerns me at the time.

In my path to understanding and reflecting about these issues I have found my way through “Reflexive Modeling”. Models are just limited abstractions of reality and is part of our job as researchers to dig in the stories behind our models and learn to engage in a dialogue between both worlds.

I am a marine environmental scientist by training (U Oldenburg, 2001) with a PhD in atmospheric physics (U Wuppertal, 2005) and a strong modeling focus throughout my career.

Archaological modeling

I have built models (C, C++) for understanding the regional transitions from hunting-gathering subsistence to agropastoral life styles throughout the world. The fundamental principle of these models is to consider aggregate traits of populations, such as the preference for a subsistence style. I applied these models to the European “Wave of Advance”, to the disintegration of the urban Indus civilisation and to the differential emergence of agropastoralism in the Americas versus Europe, but also globally. An interesting outcome of these models are global and reginoally resolved prehistoric CO2 emissions caused by the land use transitions.

Ecosystem modeling

I have built and applied models for understanding the ecological relations and biogeochemical flows through the North Sea ecosystem. Also for this research I apply trait-based models, looking at traits such as vertical positioning or energy allocation. As an outcome, I have, e.g., estimated the biomass of blue mussels in the North Sea and quantified the effect of Offshore Wind Farm biofouling on the sea’s produtivity.

Model coupling

I led the development of the Earth System coupler MOSSCO, leveraging ESMF technologies. I like to rip legacy models apart and reconstruct them with interoperability and reusability by design. I contribute to building the next-generation modular hurricane forecasting system.

Good scientific modeling practices

As a member of the Open Modeling Foundation (OMF), I am an evangelist of good scientific software practices, and educate and publish about improving underlying assumptions, stating clear purposes, keeping models simple and aquiring tools to further good practices.

Dr. Kimberly G. Rogers studies the coupled human-natural processes shaping coastal environments. She obtained a B.Sc. in Geological Sciences from the University of Texas at Austin and began her graduate studies on Long Island at Stony Brook University’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences. Rogers completed her Ph.D. at Vanderbilt University, where she specialized in nearshore and coastal sediment transport. She was a postdoctoral scholar and research associate at the Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado Boulder. In 2014, her foundation in the physical sciences was augmented by training in Environmental Anthropology at Indiana University Bloomington through an NSF Science, Engineering, and Education for Sustainability (SEES) Fellowship.

My initial training was in cadastre and geodesy (B.Eng from the Distrital University, UD, Colombia). After earning my Master’s degree in Geography (UPTC, Colombia) in 2003, I worked for the “José Benito Vives de Andreis” marine and coastal research institute (INVEMAR) and for the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT). Three years later, in 2006, I left Colombia to come to Canada, where I began a PhD in Geography with a specialization in modelling complex systems at Simon Fraser University (SFU), under the direction of Dr. Suzana Dragicevic (SAMLab). In my dissertation I examined the topic of spatial and temporal modelling of insect epidemics and their complex behaviours. After obtaining my PhD in 2011, I began postdoctoral studies at the University of British Columbia (2011) and the University of Victoria (2011-2013), where I worked on issues concerning the spatial and temporal relationships between changes in indirect indicators of biodiversity and climate change.

Raquel Guimaraes is a Postdoctoral Research Scholar at IIASA with support from the Brazilian Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES). She is hosted by the Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA), Risk and Vulnerability (RISK), and World Population (POP) programs. Dr. Guimaraes is currently on sabbatical leave from her appointment as an Adjunct Professor in the Economics Department at the Federal University of Paraná (Brazil), where she carries out research on, as well as teaching, economic demography, development microeconomics and applied microeconometrics.

In her research at IIASA, Dr. Guimaraes aims to contribute to the extant literature and to policy-making by offering a case study from Brazil, examining whether and how individual exposure to floods did or not induce affected migration in a setting with intense urbanization, the city of Governador Valadares, in the State of Minas Gerais. To elucidate the role of vulnerability at the household-level in mediating the relationship between mobility and floods, she will rely on causal models and simulation analysis. Her study is aligned with and will have support from, the Brazilian Network for Research on Global Climate Change (Rede Clima), which is an important pillar in support of R&D activities of the Brazilian National Climate Change Plan.

Dr. Guimaraes graduated from the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil, in 2007 with degrees in economics. She completed an MA degree in International Comparative Education at Stanford University (2011) and earned a doctorate in demography from the Federal University of Minas Gerais in 2014.

Master Degree

I discovered at the same time Agent-Based Modeling method and Companion Modelling approach during my master degrees (engeenering and artificial intelligence and decision) internship at CIRAD in 2005 and 2006 where I had the opportunity to participate as a modeller to a ComMod process (Farolfi et al., 2010).

PhD

Then, during my PhD in computer Science applied to Modeling and Simulation, I learned the Theory of Modeling and Simulation and the Discrete EVent System specification formalism and proposed a conceptual, formal and operational framework to evaluate simulation models based on the way models are used instead of their ability to reproduce the target system behavior (Bonté et al., 2012). Applied to the surveillance of Epidemics, this work was rather theoritical but very educative and structuring to formulate my further models and research questions about modeling and simulation.

Post-Doc

From 2011 to 2013, I worked on viability theory applied to forest management at the Compex System Lab of Irstea (now Inrae) and learned about the interest of agregated models for analytical results (Bonté et al, 2012; Mathias et al, 2015).

G-EAU

Since 2013, I’m working for Inrae at the joint The Joint Research Unit “Water Management, Actors, Territories” (UMR G-EAU) where I’m involved in highly engaging interdisciplinary researches such as:
- The Multi-plateforme International Summer School about Agent Based Modelling and Simulation (MISSABMS)
- The development of the CORMAS (COmmon Pool Resources Multi-Agents Systems) agent-based modeling and simulation Platform (Bommel et al., 2019)
- Impacts of the adaptation to global changes using computerised serious games (Bonté et al., 2019; Bonté et al. , 2021)
- The use of experimentation to study social behaviors (Bonté et al. 2019b)
- The impact of information systems in SES trajectories (Paget et al., 2019a)
- Adaptation and transformations of traditional water management and infrastructures systems (Idda et al., 2017)
- Situational multi-agent approaches for collective irrigation (Richard et al., 2019)
- Combining psyhcological and economical experiments to study relations bewteen common pool resources situations, economical behaviours and psychological attitudes.

Mazaher Kianpour is a PhD candidate at NTNU. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering (Software) from the Payame Noor University. He obtained his Master’s degree in Architecture of Computer Systems from Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran. He started his PhD in Information Security at NTNU in May 2018. His PhD research lies at the intersection of economics and information security with a socio-technical perspective. He has several years of work experience at Tehran University of Medical Sciences, and his professional training includes Computer Networks, Cybersecurity and Risk Management.

I am Professor in Computational Resilience Economics at the University of Twente (the Netherlands), which I joined in 2010. In September 2017 I also joined University of Technology Sydney (Australia) as Professor of Computational Economic Modeling working with spatial simulation models to study socioeconomic impacts of disasters and emergence of resilience across scales. I was honored to be elected as a Member of the De Jonge Akademie of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences (DJA/ KNAW in 2016) and of Social Sciences Council (SWR/KNAW in 2017). From 2009 to 2015 I have been working part-time as an economist at Deltares – the leading Dutch knowledge institute in the field of water management – specializing in economics of climate change, with focus on floods and droughts management.

I am an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at the Hamedan University of Technology, Hamedan, IRAN. I have completed my Ph.D. in Futures Studies (foresight) as an interdisciplinary field, an intersection of social sciences and engineering. My
background comes from computer science. For my Ph.D., I decided to pursue my education in Futures Studies; the field I thought I could apply engineering principles such as requirements engineering, analytical skills, design, modeling, planning, and, test engineering to shape the
desired futures. In PhD, I started the complex systems research field and agent-based modeling with NetLogo. In addition to several publications of papers, I published a book on complex systems titled “Futures Studies in Complex Systems” which was awarded as the book of the year by the Iranian Foresight Association.

Since May 2021, I started a research collaboration with TISSS Lab at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz as a project coordinator, the German Research Centre for AI, Human-Centered Multimedia, and the Centre for Research in Social Simulation. The project title is “AI for Assessment” and its objective is to understand the status quo and the future options of AI-based social assessment in public service provisions to help in the creation of improved AI technology for social welfare systems.

On the executive side, I have also various experiences, including head of the department, deputy of the Technology Incubator Center, director of university’s research affairs, and head of the International Scientific Cooperation Office.