Claudio Cioffi Revilla, George Mason University, USA

What is Computational Social Science (CSS)?
What are its main areas of investigation, fundamental concepts, theories, and research methodologies? What contributions can this fledging of science bring to better understanding, designing, and managing Smart Cities and urban systems more generally? This introductory session will provide initial answers to these questions and an overview of this year's Lipari Summer School in CSS. Students are encouraged to read the first chapter of the recommended textbook, C. Cioffi-Revilla, Introduction to Computational Social Science: Principles and Applications (Springer, 2014, Chapter 1: pp. 1-21).

Bio
Professor Cioffi received his first doctorate in political and social sciences from the University of Florence in 1975 and his Ph.D. from the State University of New York in 1979. He joined George Mason University in 2002 and is currently University Professor of Computational Social Science, former and founding chair of the Department of Computational Social Science, and founding director of the Center for Social Complexity. His research interests include climate and human security, conflict modeling and radicalization, disasters and risk analysis, and social complexity theory and research. His current research projects include theory and applied research on coupled human-artificial-natural systems (CHANS), climate change, and advanced formal methods for hybrid functions in complex systems. His research is supported by NSF and ONR. He is founding past president and an active member of the Computational Social Science Society of the Americas, serving also as a Jefferson Science Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences and Senior S&T Adviser at the Office of Geographic and Global Issues. He has authored over eighty peer-reviewed scientific and policy analysis papers and seven books, the most recent being Introduction to Computational Social Science: Principles and Applications (Springer, 2014).