Introduction to Agents-Based Modeling

We live in an increasingly complex and interconnected world, where the actions of a few individuals (e.g. Instagram influencers, terrorists, and anti-vaxxers) can have drastic impacts on their environment. Agent-Based Modeling (ABM) is a powerful tool to help understand how individual decisions and social pressures influence system outcomes by simulating the actions and interactions among players in an environment. Two members of the Sociotechnical Systems Analysis Laboratory at NC State will provide an overview of their experiences with ABM and introduce ABM in Python and Netlogo. Attendees will learn how to identify research questions for which ABM is an appropriate approach.

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.