My research is focused on understanding the importance of spatial and temporal environmental variability on communities and populations. The key question I aim to address is how the anthropogenic impacts, such as disturbances of individual animals or changed landscape heterogeneity associated with climate changes, influence the persistence of species. The harbour porpoise is an example of a species that is influenced by anthropogenic disturbances, and much of my research has focused on how the Danish porpoise populations are influenced by noise from offshore constructions. I use a wide range of modelling tools to assess the relative importance of different sources of environmental variation, including individual-based/agent based models, spatial statistics, and classical population models. This involves development of computer programs in R and NetLogo. In addition to my own research I currently supervise three PhD students and participate in the management of Department of Bioscience at Aarhus University.

Amineh Ghorbani is an assistant professor at the Engineering Systems and Services Department, Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands. She is also an affiliated member of the “Institutions for Collective Action” at Utrecht University. She obtained her M.Sc. in Computer Science (Artificial intelligence) from University of Tehran (Iran) (2009, honours) and her PhD from Delft University of Technology (2013, cum laude).

During her PhD, Amineh developed a meta-model for agent-based modelling, called MAIA, which describes various concepts and relations in a socio-technical system. This modelling perspective helped her develop a modelling paradigm that she refers to as institutional modelling.

Her current area of research is understanding the emergence and dynamics of institutions (set of rule organizing human society) using modelling. She is interested in how bottom-up collective action emerges and how institutions emergence and change within communities.

I live in Salento, a small land located between two seas in Southeastern Italy. I work as an educator in an adult school. My educational background includes a degree in Life Sciences. During my post-graduate training, I was involved in researching the genetic and molecular responses of cells to environmental and genomic stresses. Currently, I am interested in exploring theoretical biology and complex adaptive systems through agent-based modelling.

M.Sc. Sustainable Development from Uppsala University, Sweden
Research Assistant at Helmholtz-Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ, Germany
PhD Candidate at ESCP Berlin, Germany

Wageningen University & Research
Currently researcher modelling at Biometris, Wageningen University & Research

Inyoung Hwang is an Associate Research Fellow at Korea Institute of Science & Technology Evaluation and Planning (KISTEP), South Korea. He was a visiting scholar in the School of Public Affairs at Arizona State University. He received a B.Sc. in Vocational Education and Workforce Development, an M.P.P. in Public Policy, and a Ph.D. in Public Policy from Seoul National University.

Klaus G. Troitzsch was a full professor of computer applications in the social sciences at the University of Koblenz-Landau since 1986 until he officially retired in 2012 (but continues his academic activities). He took his first degree as a political scientist. After eight years in active politics in Hamburg and after having taken his PhD, he returned to academia, first as a senior researcher in an election research project at the University of Koblenz-Landau, from 1986 as full professor of computer applications in the social sciences. His main interests in teaching and research are social science methodology and, especially, modelling and simulation in the social sciences.
Among his early research projects there is the MIMOSE project which developed a declarative functional simulation language and tool for micro and multilevel simulation between 1986 and 1992. Several EU funded projects were devoted to social simulation and policy modelling, the most recent from 2012 to 2015 combining data/text mining and agent-based simulation to analyse the global dynamics of extortion racket systems.
He authored, co-authored, and co-edited several books and many articles in social simulation, and he organised or co-organised a number of national and international conferences in this field. Over nearly three decades he advised and/or supervised more than 55 PhD theses, most of them in the field of social simulation. He offered annual summer and spring courses in social simulation between 1997 and 2009; more recent courses of this kind are now being organised by the European Social Simulation Assiciation and held at different places all over Europe (mostly with his contributions).

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.