Events
Past Event
WED@NICO SEMINAR: Lightning Talks w/ Northwestern Scholars and Fellows
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
12:00 PM
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Lower Level, Chambers Hall
Details
NICO LIGHTNING TALKS are open to Northwestern graduate student or postdoctoral fellows! If you are interested in giving a lightning talk (~10 minutes with questions) to the broader NICO audience, please fill out this short survey: https://forms.gle/vB4zc6cWoD2GihWB8. We will host our next session in Fall 2022.
Spring Speakers:
Lluc Font - Visiting PhD Student
McCormick School of Engineering
“Information-theoretic analysis of judicial decisions to reveal socially disruptive periods and topics”
Laws and legal decision-making regulate how societies function. Therefore, they evolve and adapt to new social paradigms and reflect changes in culture and social norms, and are a good proxy for the evolution of socially sensitive issues. Here, we propose an information-theoretic methodology to quantitatively track global trends and shifts in the evolution of large corpora of judicial decisions, and thus to detect periods in which disruptive topics arise.
Binglu Wang - PhD Student
Kellogg School of Management
Quantifying the dynamics of innovation abandonment across scientific, technological, commercial, and pharmacological domains”
Understanding the dynamics of innovation abandonment is essential for a deeper understanding of the innovation lifecyle. Here, we analyze four large-scale datasets that capture the dynamics of the innovation lifecycle from adoption to abandonment in diverse contexts: 2.6M scientists, 0.5M inventors, 3.5M consumers, and 5313 pharmaceutical organizations. We find that at a macro level, the abandoning probability of individuals or organizations increases with time, influencing the overall popularity dynamics. Yet beneath this macro trend lies a simple effect of preferential abandonment, governed by the underlying network in which abandonment unfolds. We find that this simple effect creates complex dynamics in how the underlying ecosystem disintegrates, generating a novel structural collapse in networked systems perceived as robust against random abandonments. Together these results demonstrate that the dynamics of innovation abandonment follow simple and reproducible patterns with direct implications for the structural properties of the underlying system. These results not only deepen our quantitative understanding of networked social systems, but also have implications for retaining user communities and protecting the integrity of ecosystems, suggesting that preferential abandonment may be a generic property within the innovation lifecycle.
Jorin Graham - PhD Student
Department of Physics
“Correlated dynamics enhanced by uncorrelated noise in coupled systems”
Synchronization arises in a wide variety of contexts, including physical systems – such as arrays of Josephson junctions, laser arrays, and power grids – and biological systems – such as ecosystems, circadian clocks, and cardiac pacemakers. These systems are embedded in environments whose influence can promote or disrupt synchronization. For example, correlated environmental noise often enhances synchronization, as it allows the system to inherit order from the environment. Recently, it has been shown that for coupled nonlinear oscillators, uncorrelated noise can in fact enhance synchronization better than correlated noise (Nicolaou et al., PRL 2020). In this presentation, I will show that a similar phenomenon arises even in the simplest coupled systems: systems that are linear and linearly coupled.
Moh Hosseinioun- Research Fellow
Kellogg School of Management
“Unpacking human capital using occupational skills”
How do we become more valuable workers? We invest in education and training to acquire skills, knowledge, and abilities that make us better at what we do. However, the acquisition of skills is not a series of independent events but is rather cumulative and interdependent among previous attainments. Certain skills are foundations for others— such as arithmetic for calculus— while there are skills like bodily coordination and orientation that can be mastered relatively independently. We ask whether such interdependencies determine the value of skills by analyzing skills' usage distributions across occupations.
Location:
In person: Chambers Hall, 600 Foster Street, Lower Level
Remote option: https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/92960926949
Passcode: NICO2022
About the Speaker Series:
Wednesdays@NICO is a vibrant weekly seminar series focusing broadly on the topics of complex systems and data science. It brings together attendees ranging from graduate students to senior faculty who span all of the schools across Northwestern, from applied math to sociology to biology and every discipline in-between. Please visit: https://bit.ly/WedatNICO for information on future speakers.
Time
Wednesday, April 27, 2022 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Location
Lower Level, Chambers Hall Map
Contact
Calendar
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
WED@NICO SEMINAR: Julio M. Ottino, Northwestern University "From Clocks to Clouds: The Complexity Revolution"
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
12:00 PM
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Lower Level, Chambers Hall
Details
Speaker:
Julio M. Ottino, Walter P. Murphy Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering, McCormick School of Engineering, Northwestern University
Title:
From Clocks to Clouds: The Complexity Revolution: How Scientific Breakthroughs Reshaped Reality and Our Place Within It
Abstract:
For three centuries, Western thought was guided by a Newtonian worldview: the universe as a vast clock, predictable and controllable. That vision has unraveled. Scientific revolutions—from relativity and quantum mechanics to evolution, game theory, and complexity science—have revealed a world of uncertainty, emergence, and creative interconnection. We now inhabit a “cloud world,” where relationships matter more than parts, and uncertainty is not ignorance but potential. This talk traces the transformation from clocks to complexity, showing how these revolutions reshape our understanding of reality and what it means to navigate knowledge, organizations, and society in turbulent times.
Speaker Bio:
Julio M. Ottino is an engineering scientist recognized for his work in fluid dynamics, chaos and nonlinear dynamics, complex systems, and especially mixing. He was born in La Plata, Argentina and grew up with twin interests in the physical sciences and visual arts. He obtained his first degree at the University of La Plata, in Argentina, before receiving a PhD in chemical engineering from the University of Minnesota. He is currently at the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science in Northwestern University where he holds the titles of Robert R. McCormick Institute Professor and Walter P. Murphy Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering. He is also a professor of Management and Organizations at Kellogg School of Management. He was the co-founder and director of the Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO) and the author of the Kinematics of Mixing: Stretching, Chaos, and Transport (Cambridge University Press 1989) and The Nexus, Augmented Thinking for a Complex World, with Bruce Mau (MIT Press, 2022).
Location:
In person: Chambers Hall, 600 Foster Street, Lower Level
Remote option: https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/99053647199
Passcode: NICO25
About the Speaker Series:
Wednesdays@NICO is a vibrant weekly seminar series focusing broadly on the topics of complex systems, data science and network science. It brings together attendees ranging from graduate students to senior faculty who span all of the schools across Northwestern, from applied math to sociology to biology and every discipline in-between. Please visit: https://bit.ly/WedatNICO for information on future speakers.
Time
Wednesday, November 5, 2025 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Location
Lower Level, Chambers Hall Map
Contact
Calendar
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
WED@NICO SEMINAR: Blaise Aguera y Arcas, Google "Symbiogenesis, Computational Parallelism, and Complexity in Evolution"
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
12:00 PM
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Lower Level, Chambers Hall
Details
Speaker:
Blaise Agüera y Arcas, VP/Fellow, CTO of Technology & Society, Google
Title:
Symbiogenesis, Computational Parallelism, and Complexity in Evolution
Abstract:
Symbiogenesis-- the fusion of formerly independent self-replicating entities into a larger self-replicating entity-- is proposed as the driving force behind evolution's "arrow of time" toward ever-increasing complexity. We'll explore an Artificial Life system as a minimal motivating example, then discuss the implications for biological evolution beyond the "standard" accounts of Major Evolutionary Transitions and "intelligence explosions" in brainy species. Energetic and computational implications will also be addressed.
Speaker Bio:
Blaise Agüera y Arcas is a VP and Fellow at Google, where he is the CTO of Technology & Society and founder of Paradigms of Intelligence (Pi). Pi is an organization working on fundamental research in AI and related fields, especially the foundations of neural computing, active inference, sociality, evolution, and Artificial Life.
In 2008, Blaise was awarded MIT’s TR35 prize. During his tenure at Google, Blaise has innovated on-device machine learning for Android and Pixel; invented Federated Learning, an approach to decentralized model training that avoids sharing private data; and founded the Artists + Machine Intelligence program.
An External Professor at Santa Fe Institute and a frequent public speaker, Blaise has given multiple TED talks and keynoted NeurIPS. He has also authored numerous papers, essays, op-eds, and chapters, as well as two previous books, Who Are We Now? and Ubi Sunt. His most recent book, What Is Life?, is part 1 of the larger book What Is Intelligence?, forthcoming from Antikythera and MIT Press in September 2025.
Location:
In person: Chambers Hall, 600 Foster Street, Lower Level
Remote option: https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/98741396308
Passcode: NICO25
About the Speaker Series:
Wednesdays@NICO is a vibrant weekly seminar series focusing broadly on the topics of complex systems, data science and network science. It brings together attendees ranging from graduate students to senior faculty who span all of the schools across Northwestern, from applied math to sociology to biology and every discipline in-between. Please visit: https://bit.ly/WedatNICO for information on future speakers.
Time
Wednesday, November 12, 2025 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Location
Lower Level, Chambers Hall Map
Contact
Calendar
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
Data Science Nights - November 2025 - Speaker: Feihong Xu, ESAM
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
5:30 PM
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Lower Level, Chambers Hall
Details
NOVEMBER MEETING: Thursday, November 20, 2025 at 5:30pm (US Central)
LOCATION:
In person: Chambers Hall, Lower Level
600 Foster Steet, Evanston Campus
AGENDA:
5:30pm - Meet and greet with refreshments
6:00pm - Talk with Feihong Xu, Amaral Lab, ESAM
Talk title and abstract TBA.
DATA SCIENCE NIGHTS are monthly meetings featuring presentations and discussions about data-driven science and complex systems, organized by Northwestern University graduate students and scholars. Students and researchers of all levels are welcome! For more information: http://bit.ly/nico-dsn
Time
Thursday, November 20, 2025 at 5:30 PM - 7:30 PM
Location
Lower Level, Chambers Hall Map
Contact
Calendar
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
Data Science Nights - December 2025 - Speaker: Yash Chainani, Chemical Engineering
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
5:30 PM
//
Lower Level, Chambers Hall
Details
DECEMBER MEETING: Thursday, December 18, 2025 at 5:30pm (US Central)
LOCATION:
In person: Chambers Hall, Lower Level
600 Foster Steet, Evanston Campus
AGENDA:
5:30pm - Meet and greet with refreshments
6:00pm - Talk with Yash Chainani, Broadbelt & Tyo Labs, Chemical Engineering
Talk title and abstract TBA.
DATA SCIENCE NIGHTS are monthly meetings featuring presentations and discussions about data-driven science and complex systems, organized by Northwestern University graduate students and scholars. Students and researchers of all levels are welcome! For more information: http://bit.ly/nico-dsn
Time
Thursday, December 18, 2025 at 5:30 PM - 7:30 PM
Location
Lower Level, Chambers Hall Map
Contact
Calendar
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)