Dr. William G. Kennedy, “Bill,” is continuing to learn in a third career, this time as an academic, a computational social scientist.

His first a career was in military service as a Naval Officer, starting with the Naval Academy, Naval PostGraduate School (as the first computer science student from the Naval Academy), and serving during the Cold War as part of the successful submarine-based nuclear deterrent. After six years of active duty service, he served over two decades in the Naval Reserves commanding three submarine and submarine-related reserve units and retiring after 30 years as a Navy Captain with several personal honors and awards.

His second career was in civilian public service: 10 years at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and 15 years with the Department of Energy. At the NRC he rose to be an advisor to the Executive Director for Operations and the authority on issues concerning the reliance on human operators for reactor safety, participating in two fly-away accident response teams. He left the NRC for a promotion and to lead, as technical director, the entrepreneurial effort to explore the use of light-water and accelerator technologies for the production of nuclear weapons materials. That work led to him becoming the senior policy officer responsible for strategic planning and Departmental performance commitments, leading development of the first several DOE strategic plans and formal performance agreements between the Secretary of Energy and the President.

Upon completion of doctoral research in Artificial Intelligence outside of his DOE work, he began his third career as a scientist. That started with a fully funded, three-year post-doctoral research position in cognitive robotics at the Naval Research Laboratory sponsored by the National Academy of Science and expanding his AI background with research in experimental Cognitive Science. Upon completion, he joined the Center for Social Complexity, part of the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study at George Mason University in 2008 where he is now the Senior Scientific Advisor. His research interests range from cognition at the individual level to models of millions of agents representing individual people. He is currently leading a multi-year project to characterize the reaction of the population of a mega-city to a nuclear WMD (weapon of mass destruction) event.

Dr. Kennedy holds a B.S. in mathematics from the U.S. Naval Academy, and Master of Science in Computer Science from the Naval PostGraduate School, and a Ph.D. in Information Technology from George Mason University and has a current security clearance. Dr. Kennedy is a member of Sigma Xi, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and a life member of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. He is a STEM volunteer with the Senior Scientists and Engineers/AAAS Volunteer Program for K-12 science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education in the DC-area schools.

Experienced Water Resources Specialist with a demonstrated history of research and management. Skilled in Remote Sensing Applications, Hydrology, Spatial Analysis, and Groundwater.
Strong community and social services professional with a Master’s degree focused in Water Resources Eng. from Tarbiat Modares University. Nowadays I’m studying in Water Resources Department, University of Isfahan. Iran.

Tarik Hadzibeganovic is a complex systems researcher and cognitive scientist interested in all challenging topics of mathematical and computational modeling, in both basic and applied sciences. His particular focus has been on several open questions in evolutionary game theory, behavioral mathematical epidemiology, sociophysics, network theory, and episodic memory research. When addressing these questions, he combines mathematical, statistical, and agent-based modeling methods with laboratory behavioral experiments and Big Data analytics.

Yiyu Wang is a PhD student in Center for Spatial Analysis and Policy (CSAP), at University of Leeds. Currently her research interests are the forward-looking simulation model of pedestrian evacuating behaviours especially in emergency situations incorporating Bayesian game theory within multi-agent systems, and their interactions with other social factors.

S.R. Aurora, also known as Mai P. Trinh, is an Assistant Professor of Management at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. Her interdisciplinary work intersects leadership, complex systems science, education, technology, and inclusion. Her research harnesses technology to cultivate future leaders and helps people thrive in our volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) high-tech world, aligning with four United Nations’ sustainable development goals: Quality education (#4), Gender equality (#5), Decent work and economic growth (#8), and Reduced inequalities (#10). She has published in top-tiered peer-reviewed journals such as The Leadership Quarterly and The Academy of Management Learning and Education and received multiple national and international awards for her research, teaching, and mentoring. Dr. Aurora earned her doctoral degree in Organizational Behavior from the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University in 2016.

I am currently a Senior Lecturer in Computational Epidemiology at Western Sydney University, School of Computer, Data and Mathematical Science where I am also a member of Translational Health Research Institute (THRI). I am a research associate at the Brain and Mind Centre, Sydney University and Adjunct Senior Lecturer at Psychiatry Monash Health, Monash University.
My work is in the areas of dynamic data-driven computer simulation and systems science. The product of my work is decision and research support software that applies agent and discrete event based models, and metaprogramming techniques to solve complex problems.
I am currently Chief Investigator (CI) on an international grant funded by Botnar foundation as well as on a MRFF funded grant with Brain and Mind Centre, The University of Sydney and an Associate Investigator (AI) on Suicide Prevention Australia funded research at The University of Melbourne. In he last 5 years I have been CI on 7 grants and commissioned research projects and AI on 1 grant with total value of over $8 million AUD.