Research Associates

Gnana K. Bharathy, in the capacities of project manager, modeler and analyst, has been leading a research team of associates to build large scale social systems models to study conflict in four countries. Previously, during the course of his dissertation work in Systems Engineering at ACASA, Gnana has developed a systems methodology for integrating social system frameworks and modeling human behavior through knowledge engineering based process, and has employed the same to create several models of leaders and followers in situations involving conflict-cooperation. His dissertation was awarded the INCOSE-Stevens award for promising research in systems engineering and integration. Gnana also received the Wharton Risk Management and Decision Process Center's Ackoff award (2005) for carrying out research on Human Decision Processes.

Gnana's formal academic training has been in the areas of Engineering (process/ environmental, and information systems), Risk Analysis, and Systems Science. Gnana also has several years of industry experience.

Ceyhun Eksin is a PhD candidate in the Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering and is affiliated with ACASA. He received his M.S. in Industrial Engineering from Bogazici University and his B.S. in Control Engineering from Istanbul Technical University. His research interests are on modeling socio-economical systems using methodologies like agent-based modeling and systems dynamics. His M.S. thesis was on using genetic algorithms to design policies for complex systems. Additionally, he is interested in human behavior modeling. His current project is on model base management and related software designs. Ceyhun has been competing in track and field competitions for the past several years and also enjoys playing soccer during off season.
 

Rui Kang is a Ph.D. student pursuing his doctorate in Electrical and Systems Engineering in the University of Pennsylvania, working along with Dr. Barry Silverman. He received his M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania in 2007 and B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics in 2005. His primary research interests locate in Institutional Economics and Agent-Based-Simulation. The current project he is involved in is Model Base Management oriented model ontology and model concept markup. In addition, he is also interested in psychology and human relationships and negotiations evolution. Rui likes to spend his spare time in basketball, boxing and football.
 

G. Jiyun Kim (Jeff) recently completed his doctoral work in Political Science at the University of Michigan and joined Dr. Silverman's lab. He primarily uses modeling (both formal and computational) and large N quantitative methods to study political transitions, conflict resolution, state failure, and political violence. Jeff enjoys taking road trips, cooking, eating at nice restaurants, watching MLB, Big Ten Football, and EPL games, and reading biographies in his spare time.

Kevin Knight is a senior research programmer in Dr. Barry Silverman's lab. He holds a PhD in mathematics from the University of Manchester, where he specialized in mathematical logic, in particular logical inconsistency and inconsistency-tolerant logics. In addition, Kevin has extensive practical experience in artificial intelligence, especially regarding knowledge bases and inference engines. He spends most of his spare time practicing martial arts.
 

Ben Nye is currently pursuing his doctorate in Electrical and Systems Engineering, researching alongside Barry Silverman. Current research work he is involved in focuses on simulating decision making in sets of hierarchal groups, working towards automated exploration of the state space. In addition to a B.S. in Computer Engineering, he also has a significant background in psychology.
 

David Pietrocola is a doctoral student in the Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering and conducts research in Dr. Barry Silverman's lab. His current work revolves around human behavior modeling and its potential applications in serious games and public policy decision tools. He has a wide range of interests including robotics, journalism, politics, world percussion and coffee. In addition to receiving a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Trinity College, David is a corresponding member of the IEEE-USA Intellectual Property Committee and spent a summer in Washington, DC, researching innovation and copyright issues for the IEEE.
 

Mjumbe Wawatu Poe is a research programmer in Dr. Silverman's lab. He received his B.S. in Computer Science from Harvey Mudd College in 2005. He hopes to use science and social simulation for the good of humanity. In his spare time he makes artistic furniture from wood and plays pick-up soccer. He also likes to keep small mathematical and scientific programming projects on the side in order to learn new concepts and stay sharp. His name means "representative of the people" in Kiswahili, an East African language.
 

Mark Roddy is a research programmer in Dr. Silverman's research lab. His current responsibilities include development of APIs as well as managing operations of the lab infastructure. He received his undergraduate degree in Computer Science from Rutgers University, concentrating in distributed systems. In addition, Mark has extensive experience is in relational database design and development in several industry domains. His hobbies include football and record collecting.
 

Ransom Weaver is a former graduate student in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies and was a 1 year fellow at the Center for Arabic Study Abroad in Cairo in 1995. Ransom led the design and programming effort on Dr. C.J. McMahon's Multimedia Tutorials for Materials Science, a CD-ROM based university curriculum for Materials Science. With Dr. Silverman in Systems Engineering he has developed HeartSense: A Game for Heart Attack Pre-hospitalization Delay Reduction, and has conducted research for the Terrorism and Asymmetric Conflict Gaming project for developing realistic synthetic personas for training simulators.

Nathan Weyer is a video game industry veteran working as a research programmer in Dr. Silvermans's lab. His primary responsibility is the continued planning and development of the NonKin Village project and it's offshoots. He received his B.S. in Computer Engineering from University of Pittsburgh. He is a strong development generalist focused on gluing all the pieces together. His hobbies center around video games.