John Rundle
External Faculty Fellow
Distinguished Professor of Physics, Earth & Planetary Science, and Applied Mathematics at University of California, Davis
Executive Director Emeritus of the APEC Cooperation for Earthquake Simulations (ACES)
Senior Advisor to the Association of Pacific Rim Universities (APRU)
Visiting Professor at Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan
Co-Founder of Open Hazards Group and Chair of the Board
John was a Visiting Associate at the California Institute of Technology (1980-1982) at the Caltech Seismological Laboratory. He was also a Member (1990 - 1997) and Chair (1994-1996) of the scientific Advisory Council to the Southern California Earthquake Center. He is currently a Distinguished Visiting Scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA (1995-present), an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute, and a Fellow of the American Physical Society (2005), the American Geophysical Union (2008), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2017). He was a co-winner of the NASA Software of the Year Award (2012), one of the two of NASA's highest honors. John received his B.S.E from Princeton University (Magna Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa, Tau Beta Pi), and M.S. (1973) and Ph.D. (1976) from the University of California at Los Angeles. In addition to natural hazards and earthquakes, he also has professional interests in forecasting, validation of forecasts, and quantitative finance. He has co-organized (along with Michael Maouboussin, Chris Wood, Will Tracy and Martin Lebowitz) a yearly meeting on risk for the Santa Fe Institute, often held at Morgan Stanley, Inc., in New York. He teaches courses in Risk and Natural Disasters; Complex Systems; and Econophysics and Quantitative Finance at the University of California, Davis.
Primary Institution: University of California
Role/Title: Distinguished Professor, Department of Physics and Earth/Planetary Sciences
Topics of Interest: Agent-based Modeling - AI/Machine Learning - Economics - Engineering - Environment/Climate Change - Finance - Mathematics/Computer Science - Neuroscience - Physics - Risk & Uncertainty - Strategy/Decision Making - Technology/Innovation - Geology - Earth - Planetary Science
Other Affiliations and Institutions: Association of Pacific Rim Universities/APEC, Senior Advisor Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan Visiting Professor
How SFI changes your mind: Opens up new vistas into trans-disciplinary research ideas, collaboration with brilliant minds across many fields, and stimulates the impulse to create new kinds of science and applications
When and how you first got involved with SFI: In 1991. Came to a workshop on Self Organized Criticality. Been visiting ever since.
Favorite Book: Order out of Chaos by I. Prigogine and I. Stengers
Favorite Film: Interstellar