About CX

The Complex Systems Group (CX) at Indiana University is part of the School of Informatics. The group was established in 2004 as the first of its kind in the university, although it was not formalized until the formation of the Department of Informatics within the School. CX is meant to foster interdisciplinary research in all areas related to complex systems. It is currently under the coordination of Alessandro Vespignani, Professor of Informatics and Physics.

CX embodies mathematicians, physicists, biologists, psychologists, cognitive scientists, information scientists, linguists, and computer scientists, emphasizing lively and multidisciplinary teamwork with other research groups within the university, in the US and abroad. For example, within IU we presently have joint collaborations with the Cognitive Science Program, the Biocomplexity Institute in the Physics Department, the Institute for Scientific Computing and Applied Mathematics, the School of Library and Information Science, the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, the Data and Search Institute, the Complex Systems and Networks Group, the Computer Science Department, and other groups within Informatics. Outside IU, CX is part of the Complex Networks Collaboratory together with the Complex Networks Lagrange Laboratory at the Institute for Scientific Interchange in Torino, Italy, the Laboratoire de Physique Théorique and at the University of Paris-Sud in Orsay, France. CX is also affiliated with the FLAD Computational Biology Collaboratorium at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciencia in Portugal.

The types of problems that we work on include mining usage and traffic patterns in technological networks such as the Web and the Internet; studying the interaction between social dynamics and online behaviors; modeling the evolution of complex social and technological networks; developing adaptive, distributed, collaborative, agent-based applications for Web search and recommendation; understanding complex biological networks and complex reaction in biochemistry; pattern formation events in early development; developing models for the spread of diseases; understanding how coordinated behavior arises from the dynamical interaction of nervous system, body, and environment; studying social human behaviour; exploring reasons underlying species diversity; studying the interplay between self-organization and natural selection; understanding how information arises and is used in biological systems; and so on. All these examples are characterized by complex nonlinear feedback mechanisms and it is now being increasingly recognised that the outcome of such interactions can only be understood through mathematical and computational models.

CX activities have been funded by a number of agencies, including the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Health, the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, the IU Office of the Vice Provost for Research, and the IU School of Informatics.

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