Introduction to Agents-Based Modelling: Workshop

In this session, members of the Sociotechnical Systems Analysis Laboratory will introduce several programming platforms for ABM, including Netlogo and Python’s Mesa package.  During the first half of the session, attendees will see example ABMs of predator-prey dynamics, virus spreading, and ethnic residential dynamics to examine how small changes at the individual level can create big system-wide changes. For the second half, attendees will participate in an interactive coding lesson to explore these dynamics for themselves. Bring along your laptop and come learn about how this modelling approach can apply to your research interests. Basic coding skills are strongly recommended, but not required.

Speaker Biographies:

Morgan DiCarlo graduated with a B.E. in Civil Engineering from Stony Brook in 2016 and her M.S. in Biological Systems Engineering from Virginia Tech in 2018. She is passionate about water systems and STEM engagement, and founded an engineering curriculum that has graduated more than 70 high school women. DiCarlo was named one of America's New Faces of Civil Engineering (2014) and selected for Nature Magazine's Innovating Science longlist (2018) for her commitment to outreach. DiCarlo is a TEDx speaker, former NASA intern and a recipient of the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, which supports her PhD studies at NC State.

Liz Ramsey finished her M.S. at NCSU in Fall 2017 and began her Ph.D. in Spring 2018. She graduated from UNC Chapel Hill in 2008 with a B.A. in Peace, War, and Defense, completed an M.S. in Strategic Intelligence at the National Intelligence University in 2010, and worked as an analyst for the Department of Defense for five years before coming to NC State. Her M.S. research applied agent-based modeling to analyze the dynamics between water infrastructure and consumers in Jaipur, India, which was funded by the Fulbright-Nehru Student Grant and the National Science Foundation Graduate Student Research Fellowship. In her Ph.D. studies, she is applying agent-based modeling and inverse modeling approaches to explore the connections between drought, groundwater, migration, and social unrest in Syria. Her Ph.D. research is funded by the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship.

Image Credit: from Izquierdo, Izquierdo, and Sandholm's "Agent-Based Evolutionary Game Dynamics", https://wisc.pb.unizin.org/agent-based-evolutionary-game-dynamics/chapter/0-2/.