Dr Karoline Wiesner

Information in Complex Systems

In my research I have used information theory to study structure formation in complex systems. Examples are vitrification, protein dynamics, quantum physics and stem cell diffferentiation. I am searching for a general mathematical framework for information and communication in complex systems. This should be able to describe their formation, maintanance and decline.

A general theory of complex systems involves many areas of mathematics and physics and philosophy of science. I develop a taxonomy of complex systems. This is relevant for phenomena ranging from physics to biology to social science.

 PhD projects

One of the outstanding research challenges necessary for establishing a theory of complex systems is to address robustness. For a theory of robustness to be useful to applications the development requires tight integration between theory and application areas. There are many possible projects in this area:

Develop an information-theoretic framework for robustness of complex networks;

Develop a formal framework for real-world complex systems as communication networks;

Develop generalised information-theoretic tools for extracting correlations in complex systems data.