Joshua M. Epstein
Encyclopedia
Joshua M. Epstein is Professor of Emergency Medicine at Johns Hopkins University
Johns Hopkins University
The Johns Hopkins University, commonly referred to as Johns Hopkins, JHU, or simply Hopkins, is a private research university based in Baltimore, Maryland, United States...

, and a member of the External Faculty of the Santa Fe Institute
Santa Fe Institute
The Santa Fe Institute is an independent, nonprofit theoretical research institute located in Santa Fe and dedicated to the multidisciplinary study of the fundamental principles of complex adaptive systems, including physical, computational, biological, and social systems.The Institute houses a...

.

Early life and Education

Epstein was born in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 and grew up in Amherst
Amherst
- Higher education :*Amherst College, in Amherst, Massachusetts*University of Massachusetts Amherst- People :* Baron Amherst , in particular:** Jeffery Amherst, 1st Baron Amherst, 18th century British army officer...

.
He received a B.A. at the Amherst College
Amherst College
Amherst College is a private liberal arts college located in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States. Amherst is an exclusively undergraduate four-year institution and enrolled 1,744 students in the fall of 2009...

 in 1976 and earned his Ph.D. in Political Science
Political science
Political Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...

 from MIT in 1981.

Career

Following his Ph.D., Epstein worked at the Brookings Institution
Brookings Institution
The Brookings Institution is a nonprofit public policy organization based in Washington, D.C., in the United States. One of Washington's oldest think tanks, Brookings conducts research and education in the social sciences, primarily in economics, metropolitan policy, governance, foreign policy, and...

 and developed a keen interest in mathematical modeling influenced by the work of Thomas Schelling
Thomas Schelling
Thomas Crombie Schelling is an American economist and professor of foreign affairs, national security, nuclear strategy, and arms control at the School of Public Policy at University of Maryland, College Park. He is also co-faculty at the New England Complex Systems Institute...

. In the early 1990's he met Robert Axtell
Robert Axtell
- References :...

, who was to become a key collaborator. From this time Epstein's primary research interest became the modeling of complex social, economic, and biological systems using computational agent based model
Agent based model
An agent-based model is a class of computational models for simulating the actions and interactions of autonomous agents with a view to assessing their effects on the system as a whole...

s and nonlinear dynamical system
Dynamical system
A dynamical system is a concept in mathematics where a fixed rule describes the time dependence of a point in a geometrical space. Examples include the mathematical models that describe the swinging of a clock pendulum, the flow of water in a pipe, and the number of fish each springtime in a...

s.

In Growing Artificial Societies: Social Science From the Bottom Up, Epstein and Axtell developed the first large scale agent-based computational model, the Sugarscape
Sugarscape
Sugarscape is a model artificially intelligent agent-based social simulation following some or all rules presented by Joshua M. Epstein & Robert Axtell in their book Growing Artificial Societies.-Origin:...

, to explore the role of social phenomenon such as seasonal migrations, pollution, sexual reproduction, combat, and transmission of disease and even culture.

He has published widely in the modeling area, including recent articles on the dynamics of civil violence, the demography of the Anasazi (both in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, usually referred to as PNAS, is the official journal of the United States National Academy of Sciences...

) and the epidemiology
Epidemiology
Epidemiology is the study of health-event, health-characteristic, or health-determinant patterns in a population. It is the cornerstone method of public health research, and helps inform policy decisions and evidence-based medicine by identifying risk factors for disease and targets for preventive...

 of smallpox
Smallpox
Smallpox was an infectious disease unique to humans, caused by either of two virus variants, Variola major and Variola minor. The disease is also known by the Latin names Variola or Variola vera, which is a derivative of the Latin varius, meaning "spotted", or varus, meaning "pimple"...

 (in the American Journal of Epidemiology
American Journal of Epidemiology
The American Journal of Epidemiology is a peer reviewed journal for empirical research findings, opinion pieces and methodological developments in the field of epidemiological research. It is published semimonthly, and has an impact of 5.454, ranking it 6th out of 105 Journals in the field....

).

In his latest book Generative Social Science: Studies in Agent-Based Computational Modeling he explores the role of agent based models in the generative sciences
Generative sciences
The generative science is a interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary science that explores the natural world and its complex behaviours as a generative process...

.

From 1987 to 2010, Epstein was a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and served as the director of the Center on Social and Economic Dynamics

He has taught computational and mathematical modeling at Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....

 and the Santa Fe Institute Summer School.

He is a member of the New York Academy of Sciences
New York Academy of Sciences
The New York Academy of Sciences is the third oldest scientific society in the United States. An independent, non-profit organization with more than members in 140 countries, the Academy’s mission is to advance understanding of science and technology...

. He is also a member of the Editorial Boards of the journal Complexity
Complexity
In general usage, complexity tends to be used to characterize something with many parts in intricate arrangement. The study of these complex linkages is the main goal of complex systems theory. In science there are at this time a number of approaches to characterizing complexity, many of which are...

, and of the Princeton University Press Studies in Complexity
Complexity
In general usage, complexity tends to be used to characterize something with many parts in intricate arrangement. The study of these complex linkages is the main goal of complex systems theory. In science there are at this time a number of approaches to characterizing complexity, many of which are...

 book series.

Awards and Honours

Epstein has received awards including the Squibb Award from the Infectious Diseases Society of America (1978), the Paul Erhlich Award (1980), the NIH
National Institutes of Health
The National Institutes of Health are an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services and are the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and health-related research. Its science and engineering counterpart is the National Science Foundation...

 Director’s Pioneer Award (1981), the Brisol-Myers-Squibb Award for Infectious Diseases Research (1997), and the Robert Koch Prize from Germany (2000)

External links

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