GSO-2022

Tenth International Conference on
Guided Self-Organization (GSO-2022)

The 10th International Conference on Guided Self-Organization takes place during 12-13 December 2022 in Auckland, New Zealand. GSO-2022 is organized jointly by the Te Pûnaha Matatini (Centre for Complex Systems) at The University of Auckland, the Centre for Complex Systems at The University of Sydney, and The International Association for Guided Self-Organization (TIA-GSO).

Research Aims and Topics

The goal of Guided Self-Organization (GSO) is to leverage the strengths of self-organization (simplicity, parallelization, adaptability, robustness, scalability) while still being able to direct the outcome of the self-organizing process. GSO typically has the following features: (i) an increase in organization (structure and/or functionality) over some time; (ii) the local interactions are not explicitly guided by any external agent; (iii) task-independent objectives are combined with task-dependent constraints.

GSO "aims to regulate self-organization for specific purposes, so that a dynamical system may reach specific attractors or outcomes. The regulation constrains a self-organizing process within a complex system by restricting local interactions between the system components, rather than following an explicit control mechanism or a global design blueprint." Information theory, nonlinear dynamics and network theory are core to many of these methods, and quantifying complexity, its sources and effects is a common theme.

The GSO-2022 conference will bring together invited experts and researchers in artificial life, self-organizing systems, and complex adaptive systems, with particular emphasis on critical phenomena and emergent behaviour. Special topics of interest include: origin of life, systems biology, physics of life, unconventional computation, swarm intelligence, measures of complexity, criticality, complex networks, information-driven self-organization (IDSO), etc.

The program includes two days, with two keynote talks and a number of regular onsite presentations on each day. In some exceptional cases, for example, due to travel constraints, the presentations may be delivered online.

If interested in participating, send an extended abstract (two pages, pdf) by June 30th, 2022, by email to: mikhail dot prokopenko at sydney dot edu dot au (with subject line: GSO-2022 submission). The notifications are expected by July 31st, 2022. Authors of accepted submissions will present the content at the conference. A special journal issue will follow (as has been the case for previous GSO events), in Entropy journal, a free media partner of GSO-2022.

Keynote Speakers

Susan Stepney, University of York, UK
Peter Wills, University of Auckland, New Zealand

Sara I. Walker, Arizona State University, USA
Mike Steel, University of Canterbury, New Zealand

Organising Committee

Nicolette Rattenbury, University of Auckland, New Zealand (co-chair)
Brett Calcott, Dragonfly Data Science, Auckland, New Zealand, and University of Sydney, Australia

Michael Harré, University of Sydney, Australia (co-chair)
Benjamin Evans, University of Sydney, Australia

Program Committee

Michael Harré, University of Sydney, Australia (co-chair)
Nihat Ay, Institute for Data Science Foundations, Hamburg, Germany
Sheryl L. Chang, University of Sydney, Australia
Carlos Gershenson, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City, México

Mikhail Prokopenko, University of Sydney, Australia (co-chair)
Georg Martius, Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Tübingen, Germany
Daniel Polani, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, UK
Justin Werfel, Harvard University, USA