The Center for Research in Social Complexity (CICS) was founded in 2010 as a space for interdisciplinary research on social behavior and cognition that takes charge of the challenges facing Social Sciences in the s. XXI, both in the national and global context, taking advantage of:
- The measurement possibilities associated with technological progress, such as the analysis of our footprint in the digital world and laboratories.
- The conditions for interdisciplinary work, not only within the Social Sciences, but between the Social Sciences and the Natural and Exact Sciences.
- The opportunities for international collaboration offered by a globalized academic community.
The general belief is that the Social Science and Natural Sciences are incompatible because they study issues that are fundamentally different. The CICS research program is based on the opposite premise: human behavior is the result of biological processes and social interactions, which must comply with social laws that are similar to the laws of physical systems. This implies that in order to advance in social studies, multidisciplinary work is indispensable. Therefore, the CICS team brings together scientists from different fields of study, all motivated by a common purpose: to better understand human behavior and social interaction phenomena in a multidimensional and integrated manner.
With the aim of attracting a diverse community, we developed a series of interdisciplinary training courses aimed at researchers of the Social Sciences as well as students of the Natural and Exact Sciences. Thus, in August 2014 we received the first generation of 5 students in the Doctorate in Social Complexity Sciences. Today we have 4 generations in progress, a space that multiplies our original space fivefold and houses more than 30 people.
We believe that the next great advance in our understanding of human behavior is developing in this process of unification.
The Doctorate program in Social Complexity Sciences has as its general objective the training of doctors who, in interdisciplinary teams open to natural, social and exact sciences, are capable of generating high impact knowledge in the social and behavioral sciences, with the purpose of contributing to teaching, research and its transfer in the academy or, alternatively, to insert itself within the productive sector or in the public sector.
Specific objectives:
- To contribute to the training of interdisciplinary guidance doctors and rigorous methodological training, enabled to develop high impact research in multidisciplinary teams and connected to academic centers of excellence.
- To contribute to the training of doctors who, in collaboration with teams of experts in the area of application, are capable of transferring approaches, methods and results of their research, the development of innovative solutions to problems of high social relevance.
- To develop an academic exchange platform that strengthens collaborative networks among graduate students and young researchers in our country, abandoning traditional disciplinary segmentation.