Meet the Team

This course is part of an international initiative to bring the best that science can offer into policy. These courses will evolve with the new science of complex systems aiming at an objective and balanced overview.

You may wish to follow the members of the team so that you can easily see their comments. Click on their name, and then click the pink ‘Follow’ button at the bottom of their profile.

Professor Jeff Johnson is the Lead Educator on this course. His interest in COVID-19 comes from a desire to see research in systems thinking and complex systems science applied to real world policy problems. He is Professor of Complexity Science and Design and Director of the Centre for Complexity and Design at the UK Open University. He is Vice-President of the UNESCO UniTwin Complex Systems Digital Campus.

Professor Paul Bourgine is an educator on the course. He is a researcher at Ecole Polytechnique in Paris and a Visiting Professor at at the Centre for Complexity and Design at the Open University. He is the President of the UNESCO UniTwin Complex Systems Digital Campus.

Professor Jorge Louçã is an Educator on this course. He is Professor of Computer Science at the ISCTE-IUL – Lisbon University Institute. His research interests concern modelling complex social systems through intensive data collection and analysis. He is a Visiting Professor at the Centre for Complexity and Design at the Open University. He is a Board Member of the UNESCO UniTwin Complex Systems Digital Campus and chair of its Education Committee.

Dr Jane Bromley is an Educator on this course. She is a Lecturer in Computer Science and researcher at the Centre for Complexity and Design at the Open University. She is interested in machine intelligence, deep learning, and image recognition by humans and by machines.

Kemal Delic is a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Complexity and Design and The Open University and ACM Ubiquity Associate Editor. Previously he was Senior Enterprise Architect at Hewlett Package for many years.

Dr Evelyn Panagakou is an Educator on this course. She is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Northeastern University in Boston USA and a Visiting Research Fellow at the Open University of UK. She is passionate about education.

Dr Cristian Jimenez Romero is an Educator on this course. His research interests include agent-based computer modelling for COVID-19. He is a researcher at the Centre for Complexity and Design at the Open University. https://www.cristianjimenez.org/post/covid-19-contagion-dynamics-model

Professor David Sousa-Rodrigues is an Educator on this course. He is Professor of Computer Science, Complexity and Design at the ESAD.cr – Arts and Design School in Caldas da Rainha, Portugal and a researcher at the Centre for Complexity and Design at the Open University.

Professor Yasmin Merali is an Educator on this course. She is Professor of Systems Thinking and Director of the Centre for Systems Studies (2015-2020) at the University of Hull. She does transdisciplinary research on complex socio-economic systems at all scales.

Dr Stephen Peake is an Educator on the course. He is Senior Lecturer in Environment at the Open University leading courses on Renewables, Climate Change and Photography. At the University of Cambridge is a Fellow at the Judge Business School and Senior Associate in the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership. He has a PhD in policy sciences and policy modelling. His career includes stints as policy analyst at Chatham House, the International Energy Agency, the OECD and UN.

Dr Nadine Peyriéras is an Educator on this course. She is Director of the CNRS BioEmergences Laboratory in Gif-sur-Yvette, France which develops original methodologies and tools for the in vivo multiscale and multimodal observation, quantification and multilevel theoretical modelling of biological processes. It researches the predictive understanding of the morphogenesis of living organisms in normal and pathological conditions to open the way to new kind of pharmacology and toxicology screening schemes.

Tell us why you’re here

We would like to welcome you to the course and learn more about why you are here. Please add to the comments below answering the following questions:

• What do you hope to get out of this course?

• What policy problems can be addressed through Systems Thinking and Complexity?

If you haven’t done so already, please fill out our pre-course survey.

If this is your first FutureLearn course, you may find it helpful to browse the Using FutureLearn and Frequently Asked Questions pages before moving on.

Prove what you’ve learned with a certificate

If you want a record of your course, you can upgrade your course for a Certificate of Achievement when you are eligible.

The Certificate of Achievement is a great way to prove what you have learned on the course and is evidence of your Continuing Professional Development. This is a personalised certificate and transcript, detailing the syllabus and learning outcomes from the course. It comes as a printed certificate as well as a digital version which you can add to your LinkedIn profile. To qualify, you must have marked at least 90% of the steps in the course complete and achieved at least 70% on the test in Week 2.

Upgrading will also give you unlimited access to the course and access to tests. You can go at your own pace and return to the material whenever you like, with access to the course for as long as it exists on FutureLearn.