Cristina Montañola Sales is an assistant professor at Institut Químic de Sarrià in Ramon Llull University, where she teaches subjects in ICT and statistics. She holds a PhD in Statistics and Operations Research and specializes in the investigation of novel quantitative methods for studying human behavior, such as agent-based models and spatio-temporal analysis. Her interdisciplinary research combines mathematics with social sciences, biomedicine and High-Performance Computing. She has studied various contexts, such as the dynamics of mobility of Gambian emigrants, demographic forecasting in South Korea, and ecological resilience of hunter-gatherers in India. Her research on tuberculosis transmissions and COVID-19 has advanced knowledge in epidemics, demographic dynamics and computational statistics. She has published articles and participated in international projects on simulation, parallel computing and global health.

2025-present: Senior Scientist, University of Hohenheim
2021-2024: Postdoctoral Researcher, Environmental Geography Department, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
2016-2021: PhD candidate, Department of Industrial and Operations Engineering, University of Michigan

I have a backround in computer science, worked in natural resource management, and ended up with a PhD in Sustainability Sciences!

I am a computational archaeologist with a strong background in humanities and social sciences, specialising in simulating socioecological systems from the past.

My main concern has been to tackle meaningful theoretical questions about human behaviour and social institutions and their role in the biosphere, as documented by history and archaeology. My research focuses specifically on how social behaviour reflects long-term historical processes, especially those concerning food systems in past small-scale societies. Among the aspects investigated are competition for land use between sedentary farmers and mobile herders (Angourakis et al. 2014; 2017), cooperation for food storage (Angourakis et al. 2015), origins of agriculture and domestication of plants (Angourakis et al. 2022), the sustainability of subsistence strategies and resilience to climate change (Angourakis et al. 2020, 2022). He has also been actively involved in advancing data science applications in archaeology, such as multivariate statistics on archaeometric data (Angourakis et al. 2018) and the use of computer vision and machine learning to photographs of human remains (Graham et al. 2020).

As a side, but not less important interest, I had the opportunity to learn about video game development and engage with professionals in Creative Industries. In one collaborative initiative, I was able to combine my know-how in both video games and simulation models (\href{https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92843-8_15}{Szczepanska et al. 2022}).

I studied Molecular Biology and Genetics at Istanbul Technical University. During my undergraduate studies I became interested in the field of Ecology and Evolution and did internships on animal behaviour in Switzerland and Ireland. I then went on to pursue a 2-year research Master’s in Evolutionary Biology (MEME) funded by the European Union. I worked on projects using computer simulations to investigate evolution of social complexity and human cooperation. I also did behavioural economics experiments on how children learn social norms by copying others. After my Master’s, I pursued my dream of doing fieldwork and investigating human societies. I did my PhD at UCL, researching cultural evolution and behavioural adaptations in Pygmy hunter-gatherers in the Congo. During my PhD, I was part of an inter-disciplinary Hunter-Gatherer Resilience team funded by the Leverhulme Trust. I obtained a postdoctoral research fellowship from British Academy after my PhD. I am currently working as a British Academy research fellow and lecturer in Evolutionary Anthropology and Evolutionary Medicine at UCL.

Dr. Morteza Mahmoudzadeh is an assitant professor at the University of Azad at Tabriz in the Department of Managent and the director of the Policy Modeling Research Lab. Dr. Mahmoudzadeh did a degree in Software Engineering and a PhD in System Sciences. Dr. Mahmoudzadeh currently works on different regional and national wide projects about modeling sustaiblity and resilience of industrial ecosystems, innovation networks and socio-environmental systems. He also works on hybrid models of opinion dynamics and agent based models specifically in the field of modeling customers behavior and developing managerial tools for strategic marketing policy testing. His team at Policy Modeling Research Lab. currently work on developing a web based tool with python for systems modeling using system dynamics, Messa framework for agent-based modeling and Social Networks Analysis.