First Mini-Symposium on Stochastic Decision Making
During the last year, several discussions between the members of the IZ LIST led to an Initiative of scientists that is interested in Stochastic Decision Making (SDM) in Biological Systems. This group met at the Maud-Menten-Saal to share ideas, discuss interdisciplinary approaches and welcome new members in the first Mini-Symposium.
The day started with welcoming and introducing words from Pawel Romanczuk and was followed by four scientific talks. Our new participants used this chance to introduce themselves, their work and thoughts on Stochastic Decision Making to the group.
Roland Netz (Freie Universität Berlin) gave an introduction to Data-driven modeling of the non-Markovian dynamics of living and complex systems with examples from protein folding and weather prediction.
Marcel Brass (Humboldt Universität zu Berlin) presented his research on social intelligence, human volition and how group behavior influences individual actions.
Oliver Brock (Technische Universität Berlin) talked about the fact that Stochastic Decision Making is in reality Decision Making but with partial knowledge and connected this thought to his research in cybernetics.
Verena Hafner (Humboldt Universität zu Berlin) discussed agency and decision making in artificial systems.
Afterwards, the Lunch break gave an opportunity to let the information from the presentations sink in, but also to exchange thoughts, raise upcoming questions and start thinking about possible collaborations.
Some of these conversations were expanded to the whole group later on. Besides many stimultating, content-wise discussions, another important point of today's agenda was the decision on how to proceed with the Initative and how it should be shaped in the future. The group was able to answer these questions and can now start working on project ideas.
The first Mini-Symposium was a success and paved the way for the SDM Initiative. Thank you to all the participants who contributed their thoughts and time, leading to this great meeting that it was.
