{"id":21813,"date":"2024-02-28T10:08:31","date_gmt":"2024-02-28T14:08:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kzoo.edu\/news\/?p=21813"},"modified":"2024-02-28T17:49:17","modified_gmt":"2024-02-28T21:49:17","slug":"complex-systems-studies-professor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kzoo.edu\/news\/complex-systems-studies-professor\/","title":{"rendered":"Alumni Honor Complex Systems Studies Professor"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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A longtime Kalamazoo College professor with connections around the world is being honored by five alumni from the Class of 2009 with a fund in his name that will help support a field of study for years to come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

P\u00e9ter Erdi was hired as the Henry Luce Professor of Complex Systems Studies in 2002 when the College received a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation. K\u2019s efforts to attain the grant were driven by a small but vocal group of students who were mathematically skilled and interested in applying their skills to social problems through quantitative models. Ever since, Erdi has influenced many deeply curious alumni, including Brad Flaugher, Jerrod Howlett, Trevor Jones, Elliot Paquette and Griffin Drutchas, who are the five benefactors initiating the Interdisciplinary Fund for Complex Systems Studies in Erdi\u2019s name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Flaugher, who works in software development for startup companies, double majored in computer science<\/a> and economics<\/a> at K. He met Erdi in his first year on campus when he took Computational Neuroscience\u2014a study of the mathematical models, computational algorithms and simulation methods that contribute to an understanding of neural mechanisms\u2014before taking all the classes Erdi offered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere were so few of us in his classes\u2014I think in my year we had only three or four computer science majors\u2014that he took all of us under his wing,\u201d Flaugher said. \u201cHe got us jobs in his lab with funding. All of us except Jerrod had gone to Hungary to work with him at his lab in Budapest. All of us were studying artificial intelligence back in 2006 and 2007, which was amazing. We were super close to him. He wrote all of us recommendation letters for graduate school. He did everything he could for us and taught us the hottest topic in the world 10 years before we needed it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Flaugher was attending an event in Philadelphia last March when President Jorge G. Gonzalez shared examples of how alumni were endowing funds in honor of their favorite or most influential professors. That led Flaugher to rally support from his classmates and recognize Erdi in complex systems studies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI talk to Dr. Erdi pretty regularly and I want to keep the interdisciplinary spirit of what he does alive,\u201d Flaugher said. \u201cI think it\u2019s a great fit for a liberal arts institution, and when I was at K, I got not only job skills thanks to him, I got jobs-of-the-future skills.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Henry Luce Professor of Complex Systems P\u00e9ter Erdi presented at the Brain Bar, a technology and music conference in Budapest, while wearing a T-shirt that says “OK, Boomer” as a way to connect with a younger audience. He is being honored by five alumni from the Class of 2009 with a fund for Kalamazoo College in his name.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n
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Erdi receives applause from Kalamazoo College President Jorge G. Gonzalez while presenting his lecture for receiving the 2018 Florence J. Lucasse Fellowship for Excellence in Scholarship.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Erdi received the 2018 Florence J. Lucasse Fellowship for Excellence in Scholarship<\/a>, the highest award bestowed by K\u2019s faculty, which honors the recipient\u2019s contributions in creative work, research and publication. He has dozens of publications from his time at K, including two books since 2019, Ranking: The Hidden Rules of the Social Game We All Play<\/em> and Repair: When and How to Improve Broken Objects, Ourselves and Our Society,<\/em> which have received international acclaim. He also recently finished another book due out soon, Feedback Control: How to Destroy or Save the World <\/em>and has served the University of Michigan as a visiting professor and scholar<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Complex systems studies can be described as an examination of how a system\u2019s parts contribute to its collective behaviors, and how the system interacts and forms relationships with its environment. Erdi added that complex systems theory finds connections among seemingly very different phenomena. For example:<\/p>\n\n\n\n