This seminar series was held in the Henry B. Tippie College of Business at the University of Iowa in the Fall of 1999. It was organized by Filippo Menczer.
The seminars were sponsored by the Santa Fe Institute's 1999 Fellows-At-Large program and by the NCS Corporate Lecture Series. SFI is an independent center devoted to catalyze collaborative, multidisciplinary research and education and to encourage the practical applications of its results. SFI emphasizes complexity science and its applications to real-world problems and domains, including information science and technology, finance, economics, organizations, and management science. Scientists at SFI try to understand how and why these complex systems behave as they do and how they learn and adapt.
The seminar series had several goals, including:
The seminars were open to all of the University academic community - faculty, graduate, and undergraduate students. However, the seminar series was grounded in the College of Business and therefore there was an emphasis on business applications of complex adaptive systems in the real world.
There were nine topics, each in a different Friday afternoon throughout the Fall 1999 semester. For each topic, two speakers with complementary expertise and background gave back-to-back presentations, separated by a break with a light reception. A joint panel concluded the day.
Students from several graduate programs in the College of Business (MA/MIS, MBA, and Ph.D.) were able to register for a special topic course offered for regular credit by the Management Sciences Department.