Complex Systems Fund
Goal: to stimulate scientific research and education at the UU in the field of Complex Systems (focus area Complex Systems Studies)
Founded by: Dr Peter Koeze in 2015
The Complex System Fund has been in existence since 2015 and in the past five years three PhD students have already been able to conduct research into the Complex Systems. This support was continued in 2020 and three new PhD candidates have now been appointed. The fund focuses on enabling additional research and education in the field of Complex Systems for which no regular financial resources are available. In addition, the focus of this fund is specifically, but not in a restrictive sense, on research into causal processes in the social and biomedical sciences.
What kind of research is eligible for grants?
The fund provides financial resources with which the Faculty of Beta Sciences, as the leading faculty of this focus area, can appoint a talented PhD student. With the availability of data and empirical knowledge, the insight that many systems are ‘complex’ is growing in almost all branches of science, particularly in the life sciences, but also in economic, social and humanities. As a result, there is also a growing need for more focused model-based quantitative research in the field of complex systems. This calls for more researchers who are trained in quantitative analysis, with the necessary mathematical baggage in combination with knowledge of the field of application.
Utrecht University's Complex Systems Studies focus area was set up with the aim of bridging the gap between the methodology of mathematics and physics and the questions and applications from other sciences relating to complex systems and complexity.
