Eric has graduate degrees in urban planning and policy and sociology and an undergraduate degree in biology. He has worked on multiple collaborative and interdisciplinary projects and is skilled at engaging communities and other stakeholders. He is adept at qualitative research and has earned a Certificate in Geospatial Analysis and Visualization, demonstrating proficiency in Adobe Suite, ArcGIS, agent-based modeling and system dynamics modeling. He is currently writing manuscripts for publication based on his work on motivating energy retrofit decisions, energy-related urban planning, municipal decision-making on infrastructure investments, and other work on resilience and sustainability.

Peter Gerbrands is a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the of Utrecht University School of Economics, where is develops the data infrastructure for FIRMBACKBONE. He teaches data science courses: “Applied Data Analysis and Visualization” and “Introduction to R”. His research interests are agent-based simulations, social network analysis, complex systems, big data analysis, statistical learning, and computational social science. He applies his skills primarily for policy analysis, especially related to illicit financial flows, i.e. tax evasion, tax avoidance and money laundering and has published in Regulation & Governance, and EPJ Data Science. Prior to becoming an academic, Peter had a long career in IT consulting. In Fall 2023, he is a Visiting Research Scholar at SUNY Binghamton in NY.

Dr. Saeed Moradi received his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas. Saeed has 11+ years of experience in research, policymaking, housing sector, construction management, and structural engineering. His career developed his enthusiasm for the enhancement of post-disaster recovery plans. Through his research on disaster recovery, community resilience, and human-centered complex systems, Saeed aims to bridge the gap between social sciences and civil/infrastructure engineering.

Amin is a PhD student in the quantitative and systems biology graduate program at UC Merced. He has been passionate about entrepreneurship since his undergraduate years in his hometown of Isfahan and then later in Bologna, Italy, where he completed his masters. Once a recipient of the Innovators Under 35 Award in Italy, he believes there is massive opportunity for society to train and motivate younger minds to acquire an entrepreneurial mindset, along with entrepreneurship skills.

Dr. Cheick Amed Diloma Gabriel Traore is a researcher specializing in modeling multi-agent systems. He earned his PhD from Cheikh Anta Diop University (UCAD) in Senegal. His doctoral research focused on the formalization and simulation of Sahelian transhumance as a complex adaptive system. Utilizing mathematical and computational techniques, he developed agent-based models to analyze the spatiotemporal dynamics of transhumant herds, taking into account factors such as herd behavior, environmental conditions, and socio-economic pressures.

To design the models for his dissertation, Dr. Traore conducted extensive fieldwork in Senegal. He collaborated with interdisciplinary teams to collect data on transhumant practices within the Sahelian ecosystem. With this data, he created a multi-objective optimization framework to model the movement decisions of transhumants and their herds. Additionally, he developed a real-time monitoring system for transhumant herds based on discrete mathematics. His doctoral research was funded by the CaSSECS project (Carbon Sequestration and Sustainable Ecosystem Services in the Sahel).

Before pursuing his PhD, Dr. Traore obtained both a master’s and a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Nazi Boni University in Burkina Faso. During his studies, he developed a rectangular grid for image processing and applied the Hough transform to detect discrete lines. His master’s and bachelor’s degrees were funded by the Burkinabe government.

Currently, Dr. Traore is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Computer Engineering and Telecommunications at the Polytechnic School of Ouagadougou. In addition to his role in student training, he is working on integrating viability theory with agent-based modeling to address sustainable development challenges in rapidly changing and complex socio-economic systems. His research has been published in several renowned conferences and scientific journals, and he continues to actively contribute to the fields of complex systems modeling and image processing.

S.R. Aurora, also known as Mai P. Trinh, is an Assistant Professor of Management at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. Her interdisciplinary work intersects leadership, complex systems science, education, technology, and inclusion. Her research harnesses technology to cultivate future leaders and helps people thrive in our volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) high-tech world, aligning with four United Nations’ sustainable development goals: Quality education (#4), Gender equality (#5), Decent work and economic growth (#8), and Reduced inequalities (#10). She has published in top-tiered peer-reviewed journals such as The Leadership Quarterly and The Academy of Management Learning and Education and received multiple national and international awards for her research, teaching, and mentoring. Dr. Aurora earned her doctoral degree in Organizational Behavior from the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University in 2016.

Tarik Hadzibeganovic is a complex systems researcher and cognitive scientist interested in all challenging topics of mathematical and computational modeling, in both basic and applied sciences. His particular focus has been on several open questions in evolutionary game theory, behavioral mathematical epidemiology, sociophysics, network theory, and episodic memory research. When addressing these questions, he combines mathematical, statistical, and agent-based modeling methods with laboratory behavioral experiments and Big Data analytics.