Leonardo Grando is a Ph.D. Student at the University of Campinas (UNICAMP) in Brazil. I am interested in complex systems, agent-based simulation, artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, programming, and machine learning tools. I have expertise in Netlogo, Python, R, Latex, SQL, and Linux tools.

My Ph.D. work project is an IoT devices (UAVs) swarm agent-based modeling simulation (ABMS) aiming the perpetual flight. The workflow is Netlogo to ABMS simulate, Python and R to data analysis, and I use Latex for my thesis writing.

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.

I am a computational archaeologist interested in how individuals and groups respond to both large scale processes such as climate change and local processes such as violence and wealth inequality. I am currently a PhD Candidate in the Department of Anthropology at Washington State 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.

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.

I am Colombian with passion for social impact. I believe that change starts at the individual, community, local and then global level. I have set my goal in making a better experience to whatever challenges I encounter and monetary systems and governance models is what concerns me at the time.

In my path to understanding and reflecting about these issues I have found my way through “Reflexive Modeling”. Models are just limited abstractions of reality and is part of our job as researchers to dig in the stories behind our models and learn to engage in a dialogue between both worlds.

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.