Research Institute for Complex Systems

Complex systems, such as the brain, the economic market and ecological ecosystems, consist of many locally interacting entities. The striking feature of these systems is the impossibility to predict their overall behaviour by studying their individual parts. In fact, all of these entities are linked, with global properties emerging from these local interactions.

The study of complex systems developed significantly during the 19th and 20th centuries, thanks to many discoveries in biology, chemistry and physics. The diversity of complex systems requires interdisciplinary research, motivating the creation of the Complexys Institute..

Advances in nonlinear physics, the development of new mathematical tools and the rapid rise of computer science since World War II have provided the necessary resources to study these phenomena. These techniques are now part of the common "toolbox" for analysing, modelling and simulating complex systems in pure science, engineering sciences, life sciences and human and social sciences.