The fourth Postdocs in Complexity Conference will be held at the Santa Fe Institute September 5-7, 2018. It will bring together many of the same participants who have attended prior conferences — two sets of prestigious interdisciplinary researchers including 13 postdoctoral fellows based at SFI and 27 James S. McDonnell Foundation fellows who hail from academic institutions around the globe.
The bi-annual meeting provides networking opportunities for early career researchers working on complex systems science, as well as special sessions from SFI faculty and other prominent speakers.
This three-day conference will build on the themes of the previous three Postdocs in Complexity meetings, refining the structure to allow additional time to build community and focus on collaborations.
Early on the first day, participants will reintroduce themselves to one another through 3-minute flash talks with a creative bent: they’ll be allowed a single slide to convey their research. Later, participants will pitch ideas for the Research Jam sessions, a popular component of the conference where the postdocs work in small groups, to tackle challenging research issues.
A new component of this conference provides an opportunity to foster collaborations: participants are invited to submit proposals to SFI’s science office for future small group meetings at SFI.
The agenda also includes a science writing session laying out principles for writing for scientific journals, and another session on writing op-ed columns. “Participants will learn how their area of expertise can be part of the wider public debate, helping to establish themselves as leaders in their field,” says Hilary Skolnik, SFI’s Postdoctoral Fellows Program Manager.