International Women's Day Celebrations

We will introduce the broad principles and the hierarchy of models used to explore complex systems. We will then discuss the emergence of counter-intuitive phenomena in complex systems, arising from the nontrivial interplay of local dynamics and coupling interactions, exemplifying the principle of "whole is greater than the sum of parts". We will illustrate this with specific examples from networks of chaotic systems. Interestingly we will show that the intrinsic local chaos of such systems can be tamed by random links, i.e. randomness of coupling connections has the surprising effect of inducing order. We will also show how random links are useful in preventing blow-ups in coupled nonlinear systems suffering from unbounded growth. We will discuss these phenomena in a wide class of systems, ranging from oscillator networks to biochemical and infection-spreading networks.