Members

I am an environmental and resource economist specializing in fisheries resource management and fisheries economics. My research focuses on understanding how harvesters adapt their behavior in response to species range shifts driven by climate change. Specifically, I explore how fishers respond to evolving fishing opportunities, the implications of these responses for biological fish stocks, and the development of adaptive management strategies. To address these questions, I utilize game-theoretical models, socio-economic surveys, and observational data.

I hold a bachelor's degree in environmental science from Sun Yat-sen University in China, a master's degree in international environmental science from Lund University in Sweden and earned my PhD from the Norwegian School of Economics in 2012. Over the past decade, I have worked as a research fellow across several countries in Asia and Europe. After many years abroad, I am delighted to return to my "home region," the East China Sea region, to continue my fishery work.

I research the marine fishery system. I am interested in the integrative quantitative assessment of the fishery system. My work in OIST is to evaluate stakeholder satisfaction in fisheries through bio-socio-economic models. In the model, I will define utilities in the biological and socio-economic models for multiple stakeholder groups and evaluate different management options regarding the resulting stakeholder utilities. Before I came to OIST, my research focused on the socio-economic dimension of the fishery, such as the socio-economic status and occupational mobility of the fishers, text analysis of the fishery policy, and the well-being of the fishery communities. Now, I am trying to combine the biological and socio-economic dimensions in fishery research.

I began my journey in physics at Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, where I developed a strong interest in statistical mechanics and computational modeling. I continued my studies at Sharif University of Technology, focusing on data-driven tools and approaches to study complex systems, one of my main tools being stochastic differential equations. I am now a Research Technician in the Complexity Science and Evolution Unit at OIST, working on linear Moran fitness waves, with a particular focus on understanding the coupled stochastic oscillations in skewness and variance in evolving trait distributions.

I graduated from the University of Tokyo with a bachelor’s degree in agriculture and　from Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, with a master’s degree in biology. My specialty is sustainability science, particularly ocean governance, with a consideration of local communities’ values toward nature. Before joining OIST, I was a project assistant for SeaBOS (Seafood Business for Ocean Stewardship), a global initiative between scientists and the world’s largest seafood companies to transform the seafood industry into just and sustainable.

Since joining the CSE unit, I’ve been involved in two projects: the Okinawa fishers’ wellbeing project and the Bio-Socioeconomic Models project. My main tasks have been survey data analysis using factor analysis, structural equation modeling (SEM), and Bayesian network analysis. 

I hold a bachelor's degree in Computer Science and completed my master's in Computer Engineering at the University of Tehran, with a focus on deep learning. What excites me most is interdisciplinary research, and I have been fortunate to apply AI across the medical, bioacoustics, and biological domains, where I love seeing how the same tools can illuminate very different kinds of problems. Here at OIST, I am a machine learning researcher, and my research aims to identify and characterize distinct speciation modes through trajectories that capture how mating, ecological, and spatial differentiation evolve over time.

Yaghoub is a PhD candidate in the CSE Unit at OIST, specializing in evolutionary epidemiology and adaptive dynamics. He earned his B.Sc. in Physics from Sharif University of Technology, where his foundation in complexity sciences was built on computational simulations spanning economics, sociophysics, neuroscience, and epidemiology. His current doctoral research investigates prolonged latency as a seasonal adaptation in infectious diseases. Using Floquet theory and adaptive dynamics, Yaghoub models host-pathogen mutant-resident population dynamics to understand how seasonality drives latency evolution. His work specifically examines how fluctuating environments select for both the average duration of latency and its population precision parameter.

I began my academic journey in Biotechnology. Inspired by interdisciplinary research that brings together biology, cognitive science, and computational modeling, I decided to pursue a master's degree in Cognitive Science.

My master's research focused on decision-making and in-group favoritism using agent-based modeling and network analysis. At OIST, I will be working on evolutionary game-theoretical models of in-group and out-group cooperation in the Complexity Science and Evolution Unit. I am excited to explore how computational modeling can provide new insights into the evolution of cooperation and complex social behavior.

I studied Philosophy and Linguistics at the University of Oxford, which left me with a lasting interest in language as a cooperative behaviour. I went on to complete an MSc in Speech and Language Processing at the University of Edinburgh, where I explored how language can be learned and used by artificial agents. Since then, my interests have broadened towards complexity science and evolution, particularly the co-evolutionary forces that drive the emergence of cooperation. This has led me to neuroevolution and to studying how cooperative behaviours arise in populations of evolving interacting agents. At OIST, I am working on game-theoretic models of the evolution of cooperation, specifically using adaptive dynamics to study when populations evolve a division of labour in public goods games.

I recently graduated from IMBRSea, an international master’s programme in Marine Biological Resources, with a major in Ecosystem-Based Fisheries Management. My research interests lie in fisheries science and management, particularly small-scale fisheries and the communities that depend on them. During my master’s thesis at IPMA in Lisbon, I worked on mapping small-scale fisheries across European waters, bringing together expert knowledge, official data and spatial analysis. This work made me increasingly curious about the human side of fisheries and how it interacts with the ecological one, which brought me to OIST. In the Complexity Science and Evolution Unit, I work on bio-socio-economic models of fishery systems, exploring how management options affect both fish stocks and the different stakeholder groups that depend on them.

I am a postgraduate researcher interested in understanding and modelling complex and multi-agent systems across a wide range of research domains. I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Loughborough University, which included a year in industry working in Research and Development. Here I first developed my interest in complex systems, and in my final year of my bachelor’s I modelled drone swarms for use in reforestation. I then obtained a master’s degree in Biological Physics from the University of Manchester. My project involved using laser microscopy to track and simulate the anomalous transport of cells in living organisms.
I joined the Complexity Science and Evolution unit at OIST, applying similar methods in agent-based modelling to investigate the emergence of cooperation and institutions in human society within the context of evolutionary game theory. I moved back to undertake a PhD in Applied Mathematics at the University of Birmingham, where I investigate collective opinion dynamics with a focus on consensus, polarisation, and oscillations. I continue to collaborate with the CSE unit and I am currently at OIST as a visiting research student.

Alex is a PhD candidate at the University of St Andrews, specialising in multisensory interactions and their behavioural benefits, employing EEG and computational modeling techniques. Currently, as a visiting research student at the CSE Unit, he is supporting research on enhancing the realism of game-theoretical models of corruption by considering the possibility of covert corruption.

Aleksandra is a PhD student in Computer Science with a strong passion for artificial intelligence, machine learning, and ecological modelling. Her research interests focus on applying data-driven methods to better understand complex environmental systems. Through both academic and practical experience, she seeks to bridge the gap between data science and ecology, contributing to sustainable solutions and innovative interdisciplinary research

Pablo works at the Institute of Transportation Systems, German Aerospace Center (DLR), in Braunschweig, Germany. His work focuses on multi-modal traffic simulation and nonlinear dynamical systems, integrating software architecture and numerical analysis with large-scale mobility data. He is a core developer of the open-source simulation suite Eclipse SUMO and leads the development of its network editor. In addition to his work at DLR, he is a Visiting Researcher at the OIST, an Associate Lecturer at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), and a member of the Eclipse Foundation.

Åke Brännström is a professor of interdisciplinary mathematics at Umeå University, Sweden. He is interested in understanding the dynamics and adaptation of living systems. Among other topics, he explores the emergence and maintenance of cooperation, the evolution of biodiversity, the spread of infectious diseases, and Earth’s ecosystems as viewed through the data-driven lens offered by environmental DNA (eDNA) monitoring. Alongside his research, he is an associate editor for Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution and heads Umeå University’s Research Support and Collaboration Office.

Mikko is a professor of fisheries science at the Department of Biological Sciences, University of Bergen, Norway. His research focuses on evolutionary ecology and population biology, integrating theoretical modeling and statistical methods with occasional empirical work. Fisheries serve as a data-rich, practically relevant arena for much of his research, particularly at the intersection of fisheries science and evolutionary ecology—including fisheries-induced evolution. In addition to his own research, he serves the community as an editor for Ecology Letters and ICES Journal of Marine Science.
 

Jaideep is Assistant Professor at the Centre for Climate Studies and leads Treehouse. He also holds visiting affiliations with the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST). Professionally, he studies forest ecology and climate change; personally, he is happiest outdoors among forests and mountain trails. He has a longstanding interest in Indian philosophy, which occasionally sneaks into conversations about nature and the world. Every now and then, he exchanges research papers for sketchbooks, with considerably less concern for peer review.

Dr. Parvinen studied applied mathematics at the University of Turku, Finland, where he completed his master's degree in 1997. He completed his doctoral thesis entitled "Adaptive Metapopulation Dynamics" and received his PhD degree in June 2001. He obtained his habilitation (docent, adjunct professor) in biomathematics in February 2006. In 2012, he completed pedagogical studies for university teachers. He is a permanent university researcher in applied mathematics at the University of Turku. Dr. Parvinen's fields of interest are metapopulations, especially structured metapopulation models, evolution of dispersal and cooperation, and the general theory of adaptive dynamics, including evolutionary suicide and function-valued traits.

Dr. Sasaki received his Ph.D. from Kyushu University in 1989 and served as Research Associate and Associate Professor there before becoming Professor at the Graduate University for Advanced Studies (SOKENDAI) in 2007. He is currently Professor Emeritus at SOKENDAI. His research focuses on mathematical modeling of evolutionary and ecological dynamics, covering a broad range of topics including host–pathogen coevolution, the evolution of sex and recombination, evolutionary epidemiology, spatial ecology, speciation and niche partitioning, and the evolution of cooperation. He has collaborated with numerous researchers worldwide, including William D. Hamilton, Martin Nowak, Steve Ellner, Charles Godfray, Mike Boots, Ulf Dieckmann, and Sébastien Lion. His research aims to uncover fundamental mechanisms underlying complex biological phenomena through mathematical theory. He served as President of the Japanese Society for Mathematical Biology (2017–2018) and has been Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Theoretical Biology since 2020.

Hanae Aoyama is on maternity leave.