Entering its thirteenth year, the annually held Conference on Complex Systems (CCS) returned to Europe this year with Amsterdam being the host venue. The 2016 edition of this international conference was attended by over 750 delegates, including a contingent of student and staff members from the Centre, to discuss the latest developments in complex systems and interdisciplinary science.

For the students, this in fact began three days prior to the conference, thanks to the third edition of the CCS Warmup. This workshop provided young researchers the chance to learn new methods and present their work via a five minute flash talk, while also giving an excellent opportunity for networking with fellow early-career researchers before the main conference had even begun.

Moving onto the main event, the range of research areas on show was broad, encompassing eight main themes: Foundations of Complex Systems; Information and Communication Technologies; Language, Linguistics, Cognition and Social Systems; Economics and Finance; Infrastructure, Planning and Environment; Biological and (Bio) Medical Complexity; Socio-Ecological Systems; Complexity in Physics and Chemistry.

As it is customary at CCS, two days were predominately set aside for 'satellite' sessions, which are independently organised workshops, typically lasting a single day, with talks and discussions concentrating on a specific subject. Notable talk contributions were made in several other satellite sessions by third year PhD students Federico Botta (in 'Computational Social Science: Social Contagion, Collective Behaviour, and Networks'), Ed Hill (in 'Modelling of Disease Contagion Processes' ) and Liz Buckingham-Jeffery (in 'Digital Epidemiology and Surveillance').

As CCS 2016 drew to a close, attention began to shift towards next year’s edition of the conference. Convening in Latin America for the first time, Cancun, Mexico has been announced as the host city for CCS 2017. Scheduled to take place September 17-22, save the date if you are interested in attending!

Ed Hill, PhD student

The conference venue: Beurs van Berlage, Amsterdam