Simon Angus Email & Phone Number

I typically introduce myself as a "specialist generalist" -- or more formally, as a computational and complexity scientist. I apply broad computational methods (numerical simulation, data-science/engineering, machine learning, agent-based-modelling) to research domains across social-, biological-, and physical- sciences. Increasingly, my projects sit at the intersection between research domains: empirical social science and applied machine learning; social policy analysis and computational linguistics; statistical anomaly detection and human rights on the internet.In Economics, I am convinced of the complexity economics paradigm introduced by SFI's W Brian Arthur, and inspired by the early work of Kristen Lindgren, have developed models of open-ended technology development, and with Jonathan Netwon, contributed to the renaissance of evolutionary game theory by studying the speed, implications and emergence of shared intentions on networks. I am also increasingly working on applied machine learning, especially in the realm of natural language processing (NLP), where I lead several projects which aim to use a combination of tools from NLP and applied empirical science to uncover insights from large corpora of public comment and writing on disadvantage in the Australian Parliament and media. When thinking about technological development it is hard to ignore the rise of the internet as the transformative general purpose technology of our age. Together with colleagues at Monash, Paul Raschky and Klaus Ackermann, I developed cloud-engineering methods and technologies that have led to what is now known globally as the Monash IP Observatory. Our platform runs 24/7 from five continents and provides continuous measurement of over 400 million internet devices, making over 3 billion measurements a day. I have developed statistical anomaly detection methods that has led to partnership, data sharing and analysis outreach with the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the US Federal Communications Commission, the Washington Post, Reuters, Reuters digital team, WIRED, ABC news, and other humanitarian organisations working in very difficult contexts. Today I serve as the Director of the Observatory. I am also a founding member of SoDa Labs, and support Paul in his role as Director. SoDa is an empirical research lab in the Monash Business School and houses many of my projects, and the Monash IP Observatory.

Listed skills include University Teaching, Complexity Science, Computational Economics, Large Scale Data Analysis, and 7 others.