Hidden Forces

In this Special Episode of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Yaneer Bar-Yam, President of the New England Complex Systems Institute. Professor Bar-Yam studies the unified properties of complex systems as a systematic strategy for answering basic questions about the world. His research is focused both on formalizing complex systems concepts and relating them to everyday problems. In particular, he studies the relationship between observations at different scales, formal properties of descriptions of systems, the relationship of structure and function, the representation of information as a physical quantity, and quantitative properties of the complexity of real systems. Applications have been to physical, biological, and social systems. He has applied this background to COVID-19 by not only studying the virus, but by actually launching endCoronavirus.org, a website built and maintained by NESCI whose “goal is to minimize the impact of COVID-19 by providing useful data and guidelines for action.” Yanee