ECCO, the Evolution, Complexity and COgnition group, is an interdisciplinary research center affiliated with the Center Leo Apostel at the (Dutch-speaking) Free University of Brussels (VUB).

Address: ECCO, Center Leo Apostel,  Vrije Universiteit Brussel,  Krijgskundestraat 33,  B-1160 Brussels, Belgium 

(This is just outside the main VUB campus,  see map and directions)

phone: +32-2-640 67 37

fax: +32-2-644 07 44

e-mail: secrecco at vub.ac.be (replace " at " by "@")

website: http://ecco.vub.ac.be

Members

The following lists the present members with their focus of research. "Core" members are those whose main research activities fall under ECCO; most of them make or have made a PhD under the guidance of F. Heylighen. The others participate in ECCO projects, but have their main activity elsewhere. For more details on individual members, click on the name to go to the person's home page, or check the short biographies of ECCO people.

Director

• Prof. Dr. Francis Heylighen: evolutionary cybernetics, self-organization, and distributed cognition

Core members

• Dr. Carlos Gershenson: design and control of self-organizing systems via multiagent simulations; philosophy of complexity
• Clement Vidal: evolutionary philosophy of cosmology; worldviews; applications of distributed cognition
• Mixel Kiemen: evolutionary cybernetics applied to economic, technological and cognitive innovation
• John Stewart: evolution of greater cooperativeness and evolvability in organisms, society, and individual consciousness
• Iavor Kostov: stigmergic knowledge development; evolution and development of biological organization 
• Dr. Marko Rodriguez: particle-swarm algorithms to explore complex networks and support collective intelligence
  

Affiliated members

• Jon Echanove: leadership and human experience in complex, uncertain environments
• David R. Weinbaum (Weaver): future evolution of the human mind
• Dr. Mark Martin: modeling cognition as rapidly evolving neural firing patterns; memetics; evolution of morality
• Shwetambara Sabharwal: interaction between cognition and emotion in interpersonal conflicts
• Dirk Bollen: situated and embodied cognition; emergence of intelligent organization from local interactions
•    Paul Iliano: systemic methods to improve individual, societal and organizational well-being
• Dr. Nagarjuna G.: knowledge structuring with semantic networks; free software; embodied cognition.
• Prof. Dr. Jan Bernheim: evolutionary, progressive world views, and measurement of well-being
• Petter Braathen: role of paradoxes and complexity in social systems
• Øyvind Vada: evolution, complexity and cognition concepts applied to memetic governance.
• Dr. Bertin Martens: cognitive mechanics of economic development and institutional change
• Prof. Dr. Frank Van Overwalle: connectionist models of social and distributed cognition
• Mehmet Tezcan: complexity theory applied to the modelling of international relations
• Erden Göktepe: complexity and self-organization theories applied to the emergence of international institutions
• John Smart: futurology; acceleration of technological evolution; developmental theories of cosmological evolution
• Dr. Tanguy Coenen: social networks and distributed systems for knowledge sharing and creativity
• Andreas Loengarov: multi-agent simulations of the multilevel evolution of social structures and networks.
• Nick Deschacht: complex dynamics models of long-term socio-economic evolution
• Jen Watkins: collective intelligence in prediction markets and on the web
• Nathalie Gontier: an evolutionary reconstruction of the dynamics of language activity
• Tom Erez: collaborative structuring of knowledge networks
• Prof. Dr. Gustaaf Geeraerts: applications of complex systems models to international relations
• Piet Holbrouck: developing a problem-solving toolbox to achieve non-zero sum solutions
• Marc Goldchstein: complexity thinking for entrepreneurship and innovation
• Tor Eigil Hodne: complexity theories applied to European knowledge governance

Photo: some ECCO members on the VUB Campus (Oct. 2008); left to right: Heylighen (Belgium), Vidal (France), Smart (USA), Nagarjuna (India), Stewart (Australia).

Students

• Geert Biebaut: social construction of shared concepts
• Francy Matthys: psychological aspects of collective intelligence

Former core members

• Dr. Johan Bollen: information retrieval and self-organization in complex networks of documents
• Leor Gruendlinger: collective intelligence in prediction markets, and analogous processes in the brain
• Klaas Chielens: quantitative, linguistic study of memetic selection
 

International collaborations

• Lakeside Labs, Klagenfurt, Austria; contact person: Christian Bettstetter
• Multiagent Division, Institute for Scientific Interchange Foundation, Torino, Italy; contact persons: Sorin Solomon
• Homi Bhabha Center for Science Education, Tata Institute, Mumbay, India; Contact person: Nagarjuna G.