I just wanted to mention / promote a course we are running twice at Cranfield University this September, called, ‘Complexity Science for Beginners’ (see http://www.cranfield.ac.uk/sims/mem/short_courses/complexity_science.htm for more info).
The course is intended for EPSRC PhD research students in the first 18 months of their research and is free for them. The course is ideal for people in that category who wish to get a taster of what complexity science is all about, its historical origins, the journey so far, how it fits in to a number of disciplines and how you can begin to make sense of it in the context of your own work or research. You can find photo’s from our pilot course that we ran in May at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/complexcarol/sets/72057594143008112/
For those with a hard technical/engineering background it will enable you to get to grips with how complexity science can be used to build models and simulations and what it means for nanotechnology, but will also present you with a framework for how to deal with the interface between the hard *and* the soft, i.e. where the world of engineering and social issues converge. This will become more relevant the further on in your career you get when the problems you are asked to deal with will not only be of a technical nature, but also involve the people dimension too! The good news here is that complexity science makes sense across the boundaries of all disciplines, albeit with subtle differences here and there.
If you know of anyone else who may be interested in this course then please do forward on this email and encourage them to have a look at http://www.cranfield.ac.uk/sims/mem/short_courses/complexity_science.htm
We would love to hear from you if you want to know more!
Thanks and best wishes, Carol