Important dates

New deadline for application : May 14 2004
Acceptation : May 28 2004
School : July 19-31 2004 at the Ecole Normale Supérieure Lettres et Sciences Humaines

Goals

Although complex systems based methods are more and more used to model social phenomena,
there is no place in Europe where there are thought as a whole.
 The aim of the school will be to develop the technical abilities
 of the participants to build a simple model and to use it at its maximal potential.
 The following aspects will be studied:

Description of the problem, modelling process, scaling aspects.
Choice of experimental protocols and of the best "measures"
 in order to highlight observable phenomena via simulations.
Presentation of the main methods and their practical application,
 without hoping exhaustivity during the 12 days of the school.

Topics

As we have just said, there is no place in Europe where are taught
in a systematic way the methods that can be used to model complex systems
 in human and social sciences. Since these methods usually come
 from other fields (mathematics, physics, computer science...),
 they are often unknown.

The school we propose to organize will have the role to fill
 this gap by proposing lectures given by world specialists
 of the domain and directed to an audience of researchers
 (including graduate students) working on modeling problems
 in human and social sciences.

The contents of the courses will relate more to the methods
rather on the application fields. Of course, the presented methods
 will be illustrated on examples coming from human and social sciences,
 but our wish is to focus on the methods rather than on specific particular case.

Computer simulations and experimentations will be studied under the format of mini-projects.

Speakers

Robert Axtell, Brooking Institution, USA,
 Agent-Based Computational Modeling in the Social Sciences with Applications to Economics

Rama Cont, Ecole Polytechnique, France,
Agent-based models of financial markets

Sorin Solomon, Jérusalem University, Israël, Multi-agent theory,
 simulation and phenomena in Human and Social systems

Alessandro Vespignani, Laboratoire de Physique Théorique, Orsay, France,
 Structure and function of complex networks

Lectures will be given in english, following the format of
 4 sessions of 3 hours for each course.

Sara Franceschelli (ENS LSH),
 Michel Morvan (ENS Lyon)
 and Gérard Weisbuch (ENS Ulm)
will also teach and will ensure the scientific animation of the
 school.

Organisation

The summer school will be organized by Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon
 and hosted by the Ecole Normale de Lettres et Sciences Humaines.
 It will take place from July 19 to 31 2004 (22 half days)
in the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lettres et Sciences Humaines, in Lyon, France.
 It will be one of the major event organized in 2004 by the
 Institut des Systèmes Complexes (Complex Systems Institute)
 of Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon.

The two Ecoles Normales Supérieures in Lyon
 are two of the most prestigious places for
 higher education in France.
 One is specialized in sciences and the other in
 literature and human sciences.
The summer school will be one of the first steps
 in the creation of long term collaborations between them.

They are installed on two campuses in the south of Lyon
(close one to the other) and own residences allowing
 to propose good quality accomodations to the participants.

The organisation committee is composed by
 Sara Franceschelli (ENS LSH), Michel Morvan (ENS Lyon) and Gérard Weisbuch (ENS Paris).

Participants

Prerequisite: participants will mainly be modelers having reasonable
mathematical skills (graduate education in Mathematics, or Computer Science or Physics).
 Researchers from human or social sciences already having
 collaboration experiences with modelers
 and so having some basic mathematical culture may also apply.

The school will be organized for both junior and senior researchers.

The number of participants is limited to 50, mainly coming from european countries.

Applications

Please send your short CV (no more than 2 pages)
and a half page of motivations to scshs@freesurf.fr before Mai 14 2004.

Financial support

Partial financial support (travel and/or accomodation)
will be available for participants upon request.
The school is supported by the program
"Systèmes Complexes en Sciences Humaines et Sociales"
 and (tentative) by the European network Exystence.

Fees

 100 euros are requested as registration fees, covering school material,
 meals (noon and evening of the week days) and banquet. 
The practical way to pay the fees will be given at the same time
 as the answer to the application (May 28 2004).