Part of the Waterloo Institute for Complexity and Innovation seminars. This talks was held in the Burgundy Room of the University Club at the University of Waterloo, February 10, 2009.
The Waterloo Applied Complexity and Innovation Seminars began in Fall 2008. Hosted by SiG@Waterloo, it is the first phase in the development of the Waterloo Institute for Complexity & Innovation (WICI). Both the seminar series and WICI will integrate knowledge from the University’s faculties, departments, centres and schools to address the most pressing problems of the 21st century.
WICI is being created to facilitate transdisciplinary, collaborative research focused on promoting innovation and resilience within the complex adaptive systems at the core of human well being in the 21st century. In the coming decades, rapid systemic change on multiple levels will contribute to global problems, potentially inducing pandemics, violent meteorological events, and social and political unrest. The weakening of national public institutions, widening gaps between rich and poor, increasing scarcity of high-quality energy, and worsening damage to the global environment coupled with increased global connectivity will erode systemic resilience and boost the incidence of surprising and even catastrophic change.
The goals of the Institute are to:
• Develop a common, transdisciplinary language and methodology and an integrated, coherent theory for the study and pedagogy of complex adaptive systems; and,
• Apply these tools to stimulate rapid and beneficial innovation that will increase the resilience of complex adaptive systems worldwide – including social, political, economic, and ecological systems – that are currently under threat.
By creating a forum and providing a common language to facilitate rigorous multidisciplinary discussion, WICI is intended to attract leading researchers in applied complexity and put UW at the forefront of efforts to understand and address multi-scale, systems level problems.
Please click here to find out more information regarding the WICI seminars.
