The MITRE Corporation operates Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs) for the federal government. A group of us have been doing a combination of research and direct work to apply the ideas of complexity science and complex systems to some of the most challenging problems facing the United States. In this talk I will highlight some of this work, the mathematical approaches we use, and some of the unsolved challenges in the practical use of complex systems. Examples will be given in a number of domains, including: using bifurcation theory to detect tipping points in physical and social systems, using complex networks to assess the risk and resiliency of critical infrastructure, and analyzing the inter dependencies of public policy in order to measure how the multilevel network of public policy affects outcomes for government agencies and civilians.

Bio: David Slater is a Lead Operations Research Analyst within the MITRE Corporation’s Operations Research Department. He has spent the last four years at MITRE applying Applied Mathematics to some of the United States’ most critical and challenging Systems Engineering problems. His research interests include complex systems analysis, network science, and complexity science. He received his B.S from Michigan Technological University in 2005 and a M.S. and Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from Cornell University in 2009 and 2011, respectively.