Promoting collaboration across the theoretical sciences
Promoting collaboration across the theoretical sciences
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2019
6:30-7:45 pm
Room 9205/6 at The Graduate Center, CUNY
Part of science involves taking things apart, and then understand how the parts work together to generate the whole. Thus, the strength of bridges and the speed of sound waves can be deduced from the properties of atoms and molecules, atoms are built from electrons, protons, and neutrons, protons and neutrons are built from quarks and gluons. But we often discover simple patterns long before we know how the parts work. What makes it possible for us to create useful theories of economics, climate, or biology before we have complete understanding of people, glaciers, or proteins?
Speakers:
Katherine Quinn, postdoctoral fellow at The Graduate Center’s Initiative for the Theoretical Sciences, where she developed general approaches to searching for simpler models of complex systems.
James Sethna, Professor at Cornell University, has worked on a wide range of theoretical physics problems, and is the author of the acclaimed textbook Statistical mechanics: entropy, order parameters, and complexity (Oxford University Press 2006).
Register here.
Lev Guzman-Vargas, Instituto Politecnico Nacional, Mexico
Larry Liebovitch, Queens College and The Graduate Center
Dana Weinberg, Queens College and The Graduate Center
Networks have been used to describe interactions at different levels of organization: between molecules in biological systems, between people in social systems, and even between parts of the brain that form an individual’s personality. Do the same rules apply at these different levels of organization? What can we learn from one level that helps us better understand other levels of organization? Professor Liebovitch will lead a panel discussion of these exciting questions with colleagues from different disciplines.
This is part of the City of Science series. See the CUNY Graduate Center Office of Public Programs for more information: https://www.gc.cuny.edu/All-GC-Events/GC-Presents. Register here.
This event is also part of the Network dynamics in society, culture, and politics series at the Initiative for the Theoretical Sciences. Download the full series PDF here.
Additional co-sponsorship provided by the CUNY doctoral programs in Physics and Biology.
Guy Theraulaz, University of Toulouse and CNRS
Sometimes the whole really is more than the sum of its parts. As humans, we organize ourselves into groups that accomplish more than any of us could alone, and so do many other animals. Professor Theraulaz will give us a guided tour of his influential work on these remarkable phenomena, from the construction of nests by ants and wasps, to the schooling of fish and the behavior of human crowds.
This is part of the City of Science series. For more information please visit the CUNY Graduate Center Office of Public Programs: https://www.gc.cuny.edu/All-GC-Events/GC-Presents. Register here.
This event is also part of the Network dynamics in society, culture, and politics series at the Initiative for the Theoretical Sciences. Download the full series PDF here.
Additional co-sponsorship provided by the CUNY doctoral programs in Physics and Biology.
Duncan Watts, Microsoft Research
Duncan Watts studies the role that social network structure plays in determining system behavior. His work focuses on broad problem areas in social science such as information contagion and organizational design. He studies mechanisms of cooperation and popularity dynamics in on-line communities.
This event is part of the Network dynamics in society, culture, and politics series at the Initiative for the Theoretical Sciences. Download the full series PDF here.
Register here.
Sponsored by the Initiative for the Theoretical Sciences and by the CUNY doctoral programs in Physics and Biology.
Th Oct 11 6:30pm in the Martin E Segal Theatre
Free and open to the public
Register HERE
The 1918 flu pandemic killed up to five per cent of the world’s population, making it one of the deadliest events in human history. On this centennial, we look at what made it so deadly, how society responded to this unprecedented emergency, and at the evolution of the flu virus itself.
Laura Spinney and Benjamin Greenbaum
