Arpan Jani received his PhD in Business Administration from the University of Minnesota in 2005. He is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Information Systems at the University of Wisconsin – River Falls. His current research interests include agent-based modeling, information systems and decision support, behavioral ethics, and judgment & decision making under conditions of risk and uncertainty.

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.

As a data scientist, I employ a variety of ecoinformatic tools to understand and improve the sustainability of complex social-ecological systems.  I also apply Science and Technology Studies lenses to my modeling processes in order to see potential ways to make social-ecological system management more just.  I prefer to work collaboratively with communities on modeling: teaching mapping and modeling skills, collaboratively building data representations and models, and analyzing and synthesizing community-held data as appropriate. At the same time, I look for ways to create space for qualitative and other forms of knowledge to reside alongside quantitative analysis, using mixed and integrative methods.

Recent projects include: 1) Studying Californian forest dynamics using Bayesian statistical models and object-based image analysis (datasets included forest inventories and historical aerial photographs); 2) Indigenous mapping and community-based modeling of agro-pastoral systems in rural Zimbabwe (methods included GPS/GIS, agent-based modeling and social network analysis); 3) Supporting Tribal science and environmental management on the Klamath River in California using historical aerial image analysis of land use/land cover change and social networks analysis of water quality management processes; 4) Bayesian statistical modeling of community-collected data on human uses of Marine Protected Areas in California.

Malte Vogl is a senior research fellow at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology with a PhD in Physics. Until recently, he worked as a research fellow and PI at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, in projects ranging from Digital Humanities work on the ancient perception of time and space in the cluster of excellency TOPOI, building and evalutation of research data infrastructures in context of the DARIAH project, large scale analysis of archival data for the history of the MPG project GMPG to the most recent, BMBF-funded work on method development for modelling knowledge evolution as a multilayered temporal network in the ModelSEN project.

**PROFESSIONS **

Associate Professor
School of Management Science and Engineering, Shandong Technology and Business University (Yantai 264005, P. R. China)

**EDUCATION BACKGROUDS **

Ph. D. Degree, 09/2009 – 07/2015
School of Economics and Management, Beihang University (P. R. China)

M. A. Degree, 09/2003 – 02/2006
The Institute of Systems Engineering, Dalian University of Technology (P. R. China)

B. A. Degree, 09/1999 – 07/2003
Department of Information and Control Engineering, Zhengzhou University of Light Industry (P. R. China)

**VISITING & SUMMER SCHOOLS **

Visiting Scholar at GECS – Research Group of Experimental and Computational Sociology (March, 2017 – February, 2018)
 Università degli Studi di Brescia (Italy)
 Co-supervisor: Professor Flaminio Squazzoni

Summer school in ‘Agent-based modeling for social scientists’ (September 4-8, 2017)
 University of Brescia, Italy
 Instructors: Flaminio Squazzoni, Simone Gabbriellini, Nicolas Payette, Federico Bianchi

The Santa Fe Institute’s Massive Open Online Course: Introduction to Agent-Based Modeling (Jun 5 – September 8, 2017)
 The Santa Fe Institute, Complexity Explore Web: abm.complexityexploer.org
 Instructors: Bill Rand

Summer school in ‘Complex systems and management’ (July 2-12, 2012)
 National Defense University, P. R. China
 Instructors: Xinjun Mao, Yongfang Liu, Dinghua Shi, Qiyue Cheng

I am currently enrolled as a graduate student at UC3M, working towards a MS degree in Computational and Applied Mathematics. Upon completing my current program, my intention is to further my education in Applied Economics, with a specific focus on the intersection of Climate and Development Economics.

My research pursuits center around investigating the impacts of climate change on developing nations. Additionally, I am interested in studying the repercussions of fast fashion consumption, examining its effects on working conditions, the environment, and the overall well-being of individuals in the countries where these garments are manufactured. In my ongoing master’s thesis, I employ Agent-Based Modeling to simulate the attitudes of individual consumers towards fast fashion. The model captures behavioral shifts influenced by peers, social media, and governmental factors. This research aligns with my broader interests in comprehending public perspectives on global matters, underscoring the crucial influence of individual attitudes in confronting and finding solutions to these challenges.

Prof. Christian E. Vincenot is by nature an interdisciplinary researcher with broad scientific interests. He majored in Computer Science / Embedded Systems (i.e. IoT) at the Université Louis Pasteur (Strasbourg, France) while working professionally in the field of Computer Networking and Security. He then switched the focus of his work towards Computational Modelling, writing his doctoral dissertation on Hybrid Modelling in Ecology, and was awarded a PhD in Social Informatics by Kyoto University in 2011 under a scholarship by the Japanese Ministry of Research. He subsequently started a parallel line of research in Conservation Biology (esp. human-bat conflicts) under a postdoctoral fellowship of the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) (2012-2014). This led him to create the Island Bat Research Group (www.batresearch.net), which he is still coordinating to this date. In 2014, he was appointed as the tenured Assistant Professor of the Biosphere Informatics Laboratory at Kyoto University. He also been occupying editorial roles for the journals PLOS ONE, Frontiers in Environmental Science, and Biology. In 2020, he created Ariana Technologies (www.ariana-tech.com), a start-up operating in the field of Data Science/Simulation and IoT for crisis management.