research

RESEARCH GROUPS AND PROJECTS
PUBLICATIONS AND TECHNICAL REPORTS
COMPUTER LAB

Research

The following is a list of active research projects supported by CSCS, many with external funding. As an interdisciplinary center, most of our projects are collaborative efforts with other UM departments or external organizations.

Project SLUCE (Spatial Land Use Change and Ecological Effects at the Rural-Urban Interface)

Principal Investigators: Dan Brown, Scott Page, Rick Riolo
Source of Funding: National Science Foundation's Biocomplexity Program

This team is exploring spatial land use change and ecological effects at the rural-urban interface (SLUCE). Project SLUCE is constructing both agent-based models and simple mathematical models to understand the social and landscape dynamics within an urban system and to project patterns of ecological change at the urban-rural fringe. More information: http://www.cscs.umich.edu/sluce/

Computational Models for Belief Revision, Group Decisions and Cultural Shifts

Principal Investigators: Scott Page, Jenna Bednar
Source of Funding: U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research

This project, in collaboration with a team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), is developing and comparing a variety of computational models, grounded in previous and future studies of cultural differences. The aim of the models is to predict intent and patterns of behavior, given new concepts. A further objective is to study the dynamics of the different models, when perturbed by unexpected external forces that put pressure on existing belief structures. Although much of the modeling will be through simulations, some grounding will be possible using either lab-based mockups, data currently available or anticipated and media reports that trigger reactions among elements of a population.

Networks and Contagion among People and Computers

Principal Investigator: Mark Newman
Source of Funding: James S. McDonnell Foundation

This group is conducting an empirical investigation of networks including networks of physical contacts between individuals by which disease spreads and the social network of contacts between computer users by which computer viruses spread.

For more information about the Networks project, please visit Mark Newman's web site.

Central African Forests and Institutions

Principal Investigator: Arun Agrawal
Source of funding: National Science Foundation

This project seeks to understand the relationships between several actors including Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), industry, and government, and their effects on logging concessions in Central Africa. Our project is a comparative study of two countries, Cameroon and the Republic of Congo and concentrates on three time periods between 1995 and the present. For more information, visit http://sitemaker.umich.edu/cafi/home

Complex Systems Advanced Academic Workshop (CSAAW)

Coordinators (2009-2010): Andrea Jones-Rooy, Jon Zelner and Rick Riolo
Source of Funding: UM Rackham Interdisciplinary Workshop grant

The goal of CSAAW is to support students who are writing dissertations that involve the interdisciplinary ideas and techniques of complex systems research. Through a series of regular meetings, students will discuss their own work and receive feedback from other students, faculty and researchers. Other meetings will consist of talks by and discussions with invited speakers who are active in complex systems research. These speakers, many of whom will be recent graduates, will discuss their own work, provide advice on how to successfully complete a complex systems (interdisciplinary) dissertation, and how to navigate through the post-graduate job market. More information can be found here:

http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~csaaw/CSAAW/index.php

Publications and Technical Reports

2009-2010

Current publications by CSCS students, faculty, and researchers include the following:

Page, Scott

Computer Lab

The CSCS computer lab is located in 120 West Hall. If you would like access to the lab, please send a message to cscs@umich.edu. All users must have CSCS logins in order to access the machines. Users must also be added to an access list for the room which is restricted by a card reader.

Once you are added to the list, you can enter the room by swiping your M-Card (UM ID card) in the reader. The lab has 20-25 desktop computers, all with 20"/21" or larger monitors. The lab machines are all Redhat or Ubuntu Linux, with shared HOME space on a raid server. There is a mix of single and dual processor, multi-core machines. Some also have nvidia graphics cards that support CUDA. Besides the usual software provided with Linux, there are also many general (e.g. Mathematica, Matlab) and specialized (e.g. Repast, Netlogo) software packages for creating, running and analyzing computational experiments.

There are also a few open ethernet jacks and UM wireless access for user laptops with DHCP, and some 24" screens that can be attached to laptops.

For more general information and the lab schedule, click here.

For specific computer-related questions, see our (under construction) Computer Lab Documentation.

For information about our softwares and policies, see this.

Acknowledgements

CSCS gratefully acknowledges support from the National Science Foundation, which has provided computers and other resources in our Lab, as part of our IDEAS-IGERT program, and as part of the Project SLUCE. CSCS also thanks NVidia's Professor Partnership Program for the generous donation of two Quadrao FX 5800s (in anatra and termite) and of a Tesla 1070 (tesla).

Thanks to the Google Summer of Code program for providing support for student interns to work on summer projects.