Year in Review: 2018 Society Member Spotlight

The Society’s website news and social media outlets often feature news sent from our members. It is our pleasure to acknowledge the accomplishments and success of our dedicated members! The following highlights from our website news are posts of personal achievements. They illustrate growth in the field and the relevance of System Dynamics through the important work that is being done in our community.

JANUARY

• In December 2017, Society member Erika Palmer successfully defended her PhD dissertation at the University of Bergen, titled “Systems engineering applied to evaluate social systems: Analyzing systemic challenges to the Norwegian welfare state.”
• In November 2017, Andreas Gerber successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled “The Dynamics of Food Availability in sub-Saharan Africa – An Endogenous Perspective on Food Production Systems” at the University of Bergen, Norway.
• The article “Linking models of human behavior and climate alters projected climate change,” by Society member Sara Metcalf, Travis Franck, and Asim Zia, et al, was published in Nature Climate Change.
• Society Member Mihir Mathur conducted a one-day workshop on systems thinking for development sector for 2017 cohort of India Fellows at New Delhi.

   

  

• In December 2017, Society member Johannes Hartwig successfully defended his PhD thesis “Intellectual property rights, economic growth, and the business cycle: A dynamic macroeconomic impact assessment study,” at the University of Bergen in Norway.
  
• Society member Shayne Gary was recently promoted to Professor at UNSW Business School in Sydney.
• The research paper, “Does replacing coal with wood lower CO₂ emissions? Dynamic lifecycle analysis of wood bioenergy,” by Society members John Sterman and Juliette Rooney-Varga, along with their colleague Lori Siegel, was published in Environmental Research Letters.
• Society member Markus Salge was promoted to Senior Director at A&M’s German Disputes and Investigations Services practice.

FEBRUARY

• A review of the United Kingdom computational modelling capabilities was
  

  

  published by the Government Office for Science and the Council for Science and Technology. Society member, David Lane, was one of the experts who contributed to the report.

• The research article, “Modeling for the regional integration of electricity markets,” by members Danny Ibarra-Vega and Isaac Dyner, along with their colleagues, was recently published in the journal Energy for Sustainable Development.
• Society member Rana Azghandi was among three PhD students featured in the News@Northeastern article “From ‘Gut Brains’ to Supply Chains, PhD Students Tackle Complex Problems.”
• Society member John Sterman was quoted in the article “AP FACT CHECK: Trump’s visa lottery system doesn’t exist,” by Calvin Woodward of the Associated Press.

MARCH

• DeFred (Fritz) G. Folts III, co-founder, managing partner, and chief investment strategist at 3EDGE Asset Management in Boston, was elected to serve as chair of the Connecticut College Board of Trustees for a three-year term beginning July 1.

   

  

• The article “Cape Town’s plans for what happens after Day Zero just won’t work – Here’s why,” by Society member Josephine Kaviti Musango along with colleague Paul K. Currie, was published on the South African news website TimesLIVE.
• Professor Nam-Hee Choi of Korea National University of Transportation and Professor Jinhyung Chon of Korea University were selected as a research team on the General Collaborative Research Support Projects of the Korea Research Foundation.
• An article by Society member Hamilton Carvalho was featured on the website Poder360.
• Member Amin Dehdarian defended his PhD dissertation at the College of Management of Technology at Ecole Polytechnique Federale Lausanne in Switzerland (August 2017).
• Society member Raafat Zaini was featured in an animated podcast based on “Let’s Talk Change in a University: A Simple Model for Addressing a Complex Agenda,” a paper by Raafat and fellow Society members Oleg Pavlov, Khalid Saeed, and Michael Radzicki.

APRIL

• Society member Sarah Mostafavi was announced as the winner of the MS Student of the Year Award on Virginia Tech’s Industrial and Systems Engineering Department’s web news.
• The journal Industrial and Corporate Change published the article “How visible is the visible hand of top management in strategic renewals? Guided evolution and the intraorganizational ecology model of adaptation,” by Society member Edoardo Mollona, Department of Computer Science and Engineering (DISI), University of Bologna, Italy.
• The article “March for Our Lives: Gun Violence, Taking Sides, Limiting Choices – Blowing our Chances,” by Society Sponsor Krishna Pendyala, was featured on the Thrive Global website.
• The article “Integrating Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in Participatory
  

  

  Modeling to Elicit Behavioral Drivers in Environmental Dilemmas: the Case of Air Pollution in Talca, Chile,” by Policy Council member Nuno Videira and colleague Franziska Meinherz, was published in the journal Environmental Management.

• SDS Policy Council Member Nancy Hayden and her team, which included Society member Eliot Rich, worked to improve the use of Model-Based Systems Engineering in mission-critical, high-reliability projects at the 19th Conversation of the International Federation of System Research, held in Linz, Austria, from April 8-13.
• The article “Cybersecurity in Hospitals: a Systematic, Organizational Perspective,” by Society member Mohammad S. Jalali and colleague Jessica P. Kaiser, was accepted for publication by the Journal of Medical Internet Research.
• The book Systems Education for a Sustainable Planet, co-edited by Society member Bob Cavana and colleague Ockie Bosch, was published by MDPI.

MAY

• The article “Diffusion of photovoltaic technology in Germany: A sustainable success or an illusion driven by guaranteed feed-in tariffs?” by Society members Mauricio Uriona and Lucia Baur, was published in the May 2018 issue of Energy.
• The op-ed article “Pruitt Is Wrong on Burning Forests for Energy,” by Society member John Sterman, with colleagues William H. Schlesinger, Beverly Law, and William R. Moomaw, was published by The New York Times.
• The article “A model simulator: The lives of Jay W Forrester,” by Society members David C. Lane and John D. Sterman, was published in the Journal of Simulation.

   

  

• The Brazilian edition of the book titled Corruption, Evil of the Century / Corrupcao, O Mal do Seculo (Alta Books) by Society member Jorge W de Queiroz (MSc., University of Bergen), was published. 
• On May 29, Society member Steve Cucchiaro of 3EDGE Asset Management was featured on CNBC.

JUNE

• The article “Fully Dynamics Input-Output/System Dynamics Modeling for Ecological-Economic System Analysis,” by member Takuro Uehara and colleagues Mateo Cordier and Bertrand Hamaide, was published in the journal Sustainability.
• Member Navid Ghaffarzadegan, a faculty member in Virginia Tech’s industrial and system engineering department, was awarded tenure and promoted to associate professor.
• Society members Mihir Mathur and Kabir Sharma established the research and consulting firm DESTA Research LLP in New Delhi, India.
• Society members Brian Dangerfield and John Morecroft received a medal for “outstanding contributions to System Dynamics in the UK” at the annual conference of the UK Chapter in Cardiff.
• Member Jair Andrade recently joined the College of Engineering and Informatics at the National University of Ireland Galway (NUIG) as a research assistant. 
• The article “Can gender priming eliminate the effects of stereotype threat? The case
  

  

  of simple dynamic systems,” by member Vivien Lungwitz with colleagues Peter Sedlmeier and Marcus Schwarz, was published in the journal Acta Psychologica.

• The article “Developing dynamic organizational theories; three system dynamics based research strategies,” by member Vincent de Gooyert, was published in the journal Quality & Quantity.
• In April 2018, the PhD dissertation “Towards Strategic Development of Maintenance and its effects on Production Performance: A hybrid simulation-based optimization framework,” by Society member Gary Linnéusson, was successfully defended under the supervision of Prof. Amos H.C. Ng and Dr. Tehseen Aslam at University of Skövde in Sweden.
• Society member Prof. David Lane’s paper “Computational modelling for decision-making: where, why, what, who and how,” was published by the Royal Society.
• Member Hector Menendez III announced his position as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Texas A&M University’s Department of Animal Science.

JULY

• Society member Arash Baghaei Lakeh joined the UCL Institute of Environmental Design and Engineering (IEDE) as a research associate.
• The research article “Waste management in a wire and cable company through system dynamics approach” by Society members Ali Haji Gholam Saryazdi and Mohammad Ghavidel, was published in The International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management.
• Society members of Mahdi Bastan and Stefan Grösser, won the 2018 IEOM Simulation and PLM Competition award in the International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Operations Management held in Paris, France.

AUGUST

• Member Gizem Aktaş won both the Lupina Award and the Dana Meadows Award
  

  

  for her paper entitled “Modeling the Biological Mechanisms that Determine the Dynamics of Stress Response of the Human Body.”

• The Society awarded John D. Sterman the Outstanding Service Award in grateful recognition of his exceptional volunteer contributions to the System Dynamics Society.
• The 2018 Barry Richmond Scholarship Award was presented to Pooja Prasad.
• The 2018 Jay Wright Forrester Award was presented to Edward G. Anderson Jr. and Kyle Lewis, for their winning work, “A Dynamic Model of Individual and Collective Learning Amid Disruption.”
• The 2018 System Dynamics Society Applications Award was presented to Brian Bush, Danny Inman, Emily Newes, Steve Peterson, Amy Schwab, Dana Stright, and Laura Vimmerstedt for their work titled “Biomass Scenario Model.”
• The 2018 Posters of Excellence award winners from the International Conference of the System Dynamics Society in  Reykjavík, Iceland:
  • Eng Seng Chia, Jin Jia Chan, Aaron Joon Wai Lim, Jakkarin Sae-Tiew, Wei Xiang Tan, and Chi Shien Tay for their poster titled Closing the Gap: The Singapore Workforce’s Skills Mismatch and Manpower Shortage in the ICT Sector
  • Timothy Clancy, Oleg Pavlov, Bland Addison, and Khalid Saeed for their poster titled Resolving the Sageman-Hoffman Debate: A Generic Structure for Terrorist Radicalization
  • Andrijana Horvat, Vincenzo Fogliano, and Pieternel A. Luning for their poster titled Understanding the adoption of food innovations: The case of insect-based products in the Netherlands
  • Rizky Januar and Gurvinder Arora for their poster titled Modelling Land Use in Megacities under Deep Uncertainty: The Case of JakartaThe 2018 Posters of Excellence Runners-up are:

• • Ivan Dula and Andreas Groessler, for their poster titled Fairness in the Beer Distribution Game
  • Hamed Fardi, Mark Knight, and Andre Unger for their poster titled Integrated Asset Management Planning of Wastewater Collection Network and Treatment Plant Systems
  • Astrid Gühnemann, Paul Pfaffenbichler, Simon Shepherd, and Günter Emberger for their poster Simulating transport and societal effects of automated vehicles
  • Julia Huebner for her poster titled How Might Consumer Choice Precipitate an Electricity Death Spiral?
• The article “Water used to be infinite: a Brazilian tale of climate change,” by Society members Hamilton Carvalho and Stefano Armenia along with their colleagues, was published in the Kybernetes journal.
• “Policy making in the cement industry for CO2 mitigation on the pathway of sustainable development- A system dynamics approach,” by Zahra Jokar and Alireza Mokhtar, was published in the Journal of Cleaner Production.
• The article “Symptoms versus Root Causes: A Needed Structural Shift in Academia to Help Early Careers” by Society member Navid Ghaffarzadegan and colleagues was published in the journal BioScience.
• The research article “Combining role-play with interactive simulation to motivate informed climate action: Evidence from the World Climate simulation,” by Society members Juliette Rooney Varga, John D. Sterman, Travis Franck, Florian Kapmeier, and Andrew Jones, along with colleagues Eduardo Fracassi, Travis Franck, Victoria Kurker, Ellie Johnston, and Kenneth Rath, was published in PLos One.

SEPTEMBER

• Society member Dr. Rachel Freeman has published an open-source paper in Frontiers in Energy Systems.
• Dr. David Carter was awarded a PhD by the University of Plymouth, UK.  Dr. Carter’s thesis is titled “Time for change: a study of enrollment decision dynamics for admission into English secondary education.”

OCTOBER

• Society member Giovanni Cunico completed the European Master in System
  

  

  Dynamics in autumn 2017 under the supervision of Professor Nuno Videira and Dr. Nici Zimmermann.

• The article “Modeling and estimating the feedback mechanisms among depression, rumination, and stressors in adolescents,” by Society members Niyousha Hosseinichimeh, Mohammad S. Jalali, Hazhir Rahmandad, along with their colleagues, was published in PLoS ONE.

• The research article “Test and Validating the Group Model Building with the Reference Model” by Ali Haji Gholam Saryazdi and Manuchehr Manteghi, members of the System Dynamics Society’s Iran Chapter, was published in The Journal of Industrial Management.
• On October 6, The New York Times published the article “Stopping Climate Change Is Hopeless. Let’s Do It.” by Society member and co-founder of the Climate Interactive, Andrew Jones and colleague Auden Schendler.
• The special issue System Dynamics Review: Celebrating the 60th Anniversary of the System Dynamics Field featuring articles by many members of the System Dynamics Society was released. (Visit the journal to see a list of authors and articles. Check back soon for special author spotlights on wiSDom!)

NOVEMBER

• The article “Decision-making and biases in cybersecurity capability development: Evidence from a simulation game experiment,” by Society member Mohammad S. Jalali, along with colleagues Michael Siegel and Stuart Madnick, was recently published in The Journal of Strategic Information Systems.

   

  

• Society member Saeed Langarudi, along with co-authors Yining Bai, Austin Hanson, Connie Maxwell, and Alexander Fernald, was presented with the Best Paper Award at the Computational Social Science Society of the Americas (CSS) Conference.
• Society member Amanda Karapici has recently been admitted for a Research Degree, MPhil/PhD Public Health & Policy, at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Amanda also was offered a 3-year studentship by NIHR School for Public Health Research starting in January.

DECEMBER

• On December 4, the third issue of this year’s System Dynamics Review was released. (Visit the journal to see a list of authors and articles. Check back soon for special author spotlights on wiSDom!)

To read the complete articles as well as other news featured in 2018, please visit the SDS website news!

A sincere thank you to all of our members who have submitted news articles and congratulations to all for an outstanding year! As always, we would love to hear from you––please send your news to office@systemdynamics.org or submit a blog comment below!