CABDyN Project Profiles

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	Neil Johnson    Professor of Physics    Department of Physics, University of Miami
	Neil Johnson heads up a new inter-disciplinary research group in Complexity at University of Miami (Physics Dept.) looking at collective behavior and emergent properties in a wide range of real- world Complex Systems: from the physical, biological, medical domains through to social and even financial domains. The fascinating feature of Complex Systems is that they all contain many interacting objects, with strong feedback from both inside and outside the system, and are typically far from equilibrium and exhibit extreme behavior. Examples under active study in his group include: Biological Complexity: Nutrient networks in cancer tumours, angiogenesis; fungal systems; arterio-venous malformations. Analysis of viruses spreading in communities, either in the real world or online. Evolution of human disease, including Parkinson's. Social Complexity: Spatio-temporal patterns in human conflict. Contagion in financial markets. Group dynamics in online games. Physical Complexity: Optically-induced quantum entanglement in nanostructures. Quantum phase transitions in optically-driven nanostructure systems. Quantum networks. Quantum games. Neil's research group is currently forging new interdisciplinary links both within the existing Theoretical Condensed Matter and Nonlinear Dynamics groups, as well as other departments within UM (including medicine, life sciences and social sciences) and other institutions in Miami and Florida. Until summer 2007, Neil was Professor of Physics at Oxford University (U.K.), having first joined the faculty in 1992. He did his BA at Cambridge University (U.K.) and PhD at Harvard University as a Kennedy Scholar. He has published more than 160 research articles in international journals, and has published two books: Financial Market Complexity (Oxford University Press, 2003) and 'Two's Company, Three is Complexity' (Oneworld Publishing, 2007). He is the Series Editor for the book series 'Complex Systems and Inter- disciplinary Science' by World Scientific Press, and is the Physics Section Editor for the journal 'Advances in Complex Systems'. He previously served as an Editor of 'International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Finance'.