Up Close: The Institute for Complex Adaptive Matter, An Emergent Institution
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Up Close: The Institute for Complex Adaptive Matter, An Emergent Institution Greg Boebinger, Daniel L. Cox, Alan J. Hurd, and David Pines
gent behavior in hard, soft, and living matter. I 2CAM will support frequent exchanges of graduate students, postdoctoral associates, and junior faculty members between its U.S. branches and the institutions that make up its European branches and affiliates. For each of the next five years, I2CAM expects to support participation by more than 200 U.S. scientists in five I2CAM-organized exploratory workshops and one summer school; 60–80 I2CAM fellows (graduate students/postdoctoral associates) for 2–6 months of collaborative research visits to overseas ICAM institutions; and 45 I2CAM student/postdoctoral associate travel awards for week-long trips to overseas ICAMrelated meetings or brief visits at institutions. See the section on “Fellows.”
Concept Introduction Many of the key challenges and opportunities in the study of matter involve complex and collective phenomena in which many parts exhibit organization without a central instruction set or clock. At the core of this enterprise in the study of matter is the search for an understanding of “emergent behavior”—that is, phenomena whose ultimate cause involves interactions between many simple units but which cannot be easily predicted from knowledge of the component parts alone. Examples of emergence are ordered convection cells in fluids, metabolic processes in cells, cognition, and stripes in superconductors. Our shorthand designation for soft, hard, and living matter exhibiting emergent behavior is “complex adaptive matter.” The goal of research on complex adaptive matter is to find the appropriate organizing principles at given length and time scales that properly characterize emergent behavior. Because these challenges frequently fall at the boundaries between conventional scientific disciplines, there is an urgent need to create new kinds of thinking, communication, and institutions capable of exploiting these opportunities. Not only does this emerging science transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries, but also the rapid scale of change makes it desirable to approach its study with a dynamic institution capable of adapting quickly as new ideas and opportunities arise. In recognition of the nature of this scientific challenge and of the fact that no existing institution had formally addressed it, the Institute for Complex Adaptive Matter (ICAM) was formed in 1999 by an international group of distinguished scientists from research universities and national MRS BULLETIN/DECEMBER 2004
and industrial laboratories. The group’s vision for addressing this challenge involved nimble, cutting-edge workshops bringing together scientists from two or more fields. ICAM workshops are easily and quickly organized, and their unusual format has at least 50% discussion of talks by top researchers. Moreover, the goal for a typical ICAM workshop is over 25% participation by students and postdoctoral associates.
“ICAM is a new type of insti
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