Carlos Gershenson

Gershenson was born in Mexico City. He studied a BEng in computer engineering at the Arturo Rosenblueth Foundation in Mexico City in 2001 and a MSc in evolutionary and adaptive systems at the University of Sussex.{{cite web |last1=Kocher |first1=Chris |title=Work in the age of artificial intelligence - Binghamton News |url=https://www.binghamton.edu/news/story/5194/work-in-the-age-of-artificial-intelligence |website=News - Binghamton University |language=en}}

He received his PhD at the Centrum Leo Apostel of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium in 2007, on "Design and Control of Self-organizing Systems", under the supervision of Francis Heylighen. He was a postdoc with Yaneer Bar-Yam at the New England Complex Systems Institute.

He is a SUNY Empire Innovation Professor at the Systems Science and Industrial Engineering Department in Binghamton University.

He was a research professor (investigador) at the Computer Science Department of the Instituto de Investigaciones en Matemáticas Applicadas y en Sistemas (IIMAS) at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México from 2008 to 2023, where he was the head of the Computer Science Department from 2012 to 2015.{{cite web |title=Carlos Gershenson, PhD |url=https://whn.global/expert/carlos-gershenson/ |website=WHN}}

He was also a visiting professor at the Santa Fe Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Northeastern University and has also been editor-in-chief of Complexity Digest since 2009. He has been a member of the board of advisers at Scientific American.{{cite web |title=Prof. Carlos Gershenson |url=https://cssociety.org/member/71d25d12-13c5-4b9f-a4ca-3ba0a0e9838b |website=Cssociety}}

His work has been related to the understanding and popularization of topics of complex systems, in particular, related to Boolean networks, self-organization and traffic control. He has deployed his systems in the real world to change traffic patterns in Latin America.{{Cite web|date=2018-01-25|title=Nueva propuesta para agilizar el Metro|url=https://www.gaceta.unam.mx/nueva-propuesta-para-agilizar-el-metro/|access-date=2020-08-08|website=Gaceta UNAM|language=es-ES}}

During his PhD, Gershenson proposed heuristics to design and control self-organizing systems.{{Cite web | author=Gershenson, C. | year=2007 | title=Design and Control of Self-organizing Systems | publisher=CopIt Arxives, Mexico | url=http://scifunam.fisica.unam.mx/mir/copit/TS0002EN/TS0002EN.html| isbn=978-0-9831172-3-0}} He noticed that self-organization cannot be judged independently of a context, i.e., it is not so relevant to decide whether a system is or not self-organizing, but when is it useful to do so.{{citation |arxiv=nlin.AO/0303020 |last1=Gershenson |first1=Carlos |last2=Heylighen |first2=Francis |title=When Can we Call a System Self-organizing? |year=2003 }} The usefulness of self-organization lies in the fact that it can provide robust adaptation to changes in a system. As particular cases, he studied the problems of traffic light coordination,{{cite journal | last1 = Gershenson | first1 = C | year = 2005 | title = Self-organizing traffic lights | url = http://www.complex-systems.com/pdf/16-1-2.pdf | journal = Complex Systems | volume = 16 | issue = 1| pages = 29–53 }} organization efficiency,{{cite journal | last1 = Gershenson | first1 = C | year = 2008 | title = Towards self-organizing bureaucracies | url = http://www.ijpis.net/ojs/index.php/IJPIS/article/view/51 | journal = International Journal of Public Information Systems | volume = 2008 | issue = 1| pages = 1–24 | arxiv = nlin/0603045 | bibcode = 2006nlin......3045G }} and communication protocols.{{cite book |arxiv=nlin.AO/0404004 |doi=10.1007/978-3-642-17635-7_17 |chapter=Protocol Requirements for Self-organizing Artifacts: Towards an Ambient Intelligence |title=Unifying Themes in Complex Systems |year=2011 |last1=Gershenson |first1=Carlos |last2=Heylighen |first2=Francis |s2cid=1476317 |pages=136–143 |isbn=978-3-642-17634-0 }}

He has also explored 'self-organizing traffic lights'{{cite journal | last1 = Gershenson | first1 = C. | last2 = Rosenblueth | first2 = D. A. | s2cid = 15649642 | year = 2012 | title = Self-organizing traffic lights at multiple-street intersections | journal = Complexity | volume = 17 | issue = 4| pages = 23–39 | doi = 10.1002/cplx.20392 | arxiv = 1104.2829 | bibcode = 2012Cmplx..17d..23G }} and also applied self-organization to public transport regulation{{cite journal | last1 = Gershenson | first1 = C. | last2 = Pineda | first2 = L. A. | year = 2009 | title = Why does public transport not arrive on time? The pervasiveness of equal headway instability | doi = 10.1371/journal.pone.0007292 | journal = PLOS ONE | volume = 4 | issue = 10| page = e7292 | pmid = 19862321 | bibcode = 2009PLoSO...4.7292G | pmc = 2762539 | doi-access = free }}{{cite journal | last1 = Gershenson | first1 = C | year = 2011 | title = Self-organization leads to supraoptimal performance in public transportation systems | doi = 10.1371/journal.pone.0021469 | journal = PLOS ONE | volume = 6 | issue = 6| page = e21469 | pmid=21738674 | pmc=3127858| bibcode = 2011PLoSO...621469G | doi-access = free }} and other urban systems.{{cite journal | last1 = Gershenson | first1 = C | s2cid = 9058322 | year = 2013 | title = Living in living cities | journal = Artificial Life | volume = 19 | issue = 3–4| pages = 401–420 | doi = 10.1162/ARTL_a_00112 | pmid = 23834590 | arxiv = 1111.3659 }} Together with Gustavo Carreón, Tania Pérez, Jorge Zapotecatl, and Luis Pineda, he developed the #Metrevolución project,{{Cite web|url=http://turing.iimas.unam.mx/sos/?q=metrevolucion|title=Metrevolución | Self-organizing Systems Lab}} which managed to coordinate boarding and descent of passengers in the Mexico City metro.

During his MSc studies, Gershenson proposed a naming convention for random Boolean networks depending on their updating scheme.{{citation |arxiv=cs/0208001 |last1=Gershenson |first1=Carlos |title=Classification of Random Boolean Networks |year=2002 |bibcode=2002cs........8001G }}

He has also studied the effect of redundancy{{citation |arxiv=nlin.AO/0511018 |last1=Gershenson |first1=Carlos |last2=Kauffman |first2=Stuart A. |last3=Shmulevich |first3=Ilya |title=The Role of Redundancy in the Robustness of Random Boolean Networks |year=2005 |bibcode=2005nlin.....11018G }} and modularity{{cite journal | last1 = Poblanno-Balp | first1 = R. | last2 = Gershenson | first2 = C. | s2cid = 17472129 | year = 2011 | title = Modular random Boolean networks | arxiv = 1101.1893| journal = Artificial Life | volume = 17 | issue = 4| pages = 331–351 | doi=10.1162/artl_a_00042| pmid = 21762022 }} on random Boolean networks.

He was co-chair of ALIFE XV, the international Artificial Life conference, held in Cancun, Mexico, in 2016.{{Cite book| author1=Gershenson, C. | author2=Froese, T. | author3= Siqueiros, J. M. | author4= Aguilar, W. | author5= Izquierdo, E. J. | author6= Sayama, H. (Eds.) | year=2016 | title=Proceedings of the Artificial Life Conference 2016 | publisher= MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA. | isbn=9780262339360 | url=https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/proceedings-artificial-life-conference-2016 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160819112133/https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/proceedings-artificial-life-conference-2016 | archive-date=2016-08-19}}

Gershenson also co-chaired together with Jose Luis Mateos the Conference on Complex Systems 2017, held for the first time in Latin America in Cancun.{{cite web |title=Conference on Complex Systems: Steering Committee |url=https://cssociety.org/ccs/steering-committee |website=Complex Systems Society}}

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Category:Mexican computer scientists

Category:Scientists from Mexico City

Category:1978 births

Category:Living people

Category:Academic staff of the National Autonomous University of Mexico

Category:Researchers of artificial life

Category:Scientific American people