President meets president
What an exciting day at the Hub! We had the honor to welcome the Austrian Federal President Alexander Van der Bellen. The former economics professor, who had arrived by tram, spent one and a half hours at the Hub.
After a brief review of the founding days of the institution by Helga Nowotny, chair of the CSH Science Advisory Board, Hub president Stefan Thurner gave the Austrian president an overview of the institution as well as a report on our work—quite a “tour de force” through resilience and systemic risk in the economy or financial systems, data-driven medicine, security of supply chain networks in Austria, emotions in social media, electoral fraud, social complexity and collapse, and last but not least the work we did during “corona mode.”
During his visit Van der Bellen also spoke to some of our researchers: Johannes Sorger briefly explained his visualization work, Hannah Metzler showed the CSH social media emotions tracker, and Peter Klimek gave insights in the Hub’s “Big Data for (and in) medicine” approaches.
High profile visit at the Hub
“A deep understanding of complex systems”
Van der Bellen was impressed by the still young research institution—actually it was five years ago to the day that the Complexity Science Hub Vienna was founded, four years ago, in May, we officially started to work…
“It is remarkable what the Hub has accomplished in such a short time—and especially during the corona crisis,” Van der Bellen summed up his impressions and discussions with Hub scientists. “We are now facing major challenges such as dealing with the climate crisis. This also requires methods and people who have a deep understanding of complex systems. I see them here”, Van der Bellen said before leaving—by tram again.