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George Mason University

Research

Research

The faculty and students within the Program have a diverse set of research interests focused around complex social systems, computational modeling and related techniques. The overall field has become known as Computational Social Science. Research areas include design science, economics, geography, geographical information systems (GIS), public policy, political science, network science, cognitive science, international relations and anthropology.

One of the main tools we use for our studies is that of agent-based modeling  often utilizing our in-house multi-agent simulation toolkit: MASON.

Agent-based models have been developed to investigate a range of complex human and social systems from the bottom up, such as:

In addition we are constantly striving to solve some of the challenges in this field as well as building evidence-based models which are quantitatively based.

Other work within the Program include power law analysis applied to conflict and civil violence, social network analysis, big data analysis, and using GPUs for large-scale agent-based models.

Funding for this research comes from a variety of sources including the National Science Foundation, Office of Naval Research, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Department of Defense and the research is channeled back into the courses that we offer.

Further research applying the diverse range of skills and expertise of faculty and students can be seen in the Center for Social Complexity.