Modeling Social Systems

By modeling complex social systems, we predict trends, estimate threats, inform policy, test potential solutions, and ascertain the expected impacts of a changing world. We simulate the patterns of culture and individuals that compose human society to advance our understanding of the present and envision the possibilities of the future.

Active Projects

Modeling Religious Change engages demographic analysis and forecasting, along with complex artificial societies for a detailed understanding of religious and nonreligious identity and change that takes into account behaviors such as religious switching, secularization, immigration, religious beliefs and practices.

Strategies Against Rural Suicide aims to build a computational model, incorporating psychological autopsy data along with the insights and expertise of local service providers and policy professionals to improve suicide prevention efforts, particularly in rural settings.

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Wildman

CMAC’s approach is innovative, it’s risky and ultimately it might not work. But this approach does promise breakthrough change, allowing us to test before we invest in new interventions. We use these techniques routinely when we design cars, bridges and factories. And speaking for myself, a change skeptic, I finally feel I’m telling myself the truth about real-world change. I’ll keep up the rhythm of small-change activities. And I’ll make a very precise, limited and deliberate move on the big-change stage through CMAC.

Wesley Wildman
Executive Director

Teehan

After two (intense) days with the people at CMAC, going through the process of translating my hypothesis about religion and empathy into the language of computer modeling, it all began to make sense … Because of this method, we will actually be able to bring some data into a debate that would otherwise remain largely in speculation … It forced me to formulate my ideas in such precise and concrete terms (so they could be coded for) that I came away with a better understanding of my own theory.

John Teehan, Ph.D.
Hofstra University

Bacon

CMAC is a great environment when you are in a transitional stage of your early career and deciding what type of career path to pursue. There is such a wide variety of projects going on at one time, and even if you are assigned to primarily work on just one, there is frequently the opportunity to contribute to multiple projects. And in doing so, you get to use your skillset in areas outside your area of expertise, and also expand your skillset within your main area with an interdisciplinary team.

Rachel Bacon
Postdoctoral Fellow

Gore

Each member of the team was capable of synthesizing that multi-disciplinary knowledge into a single response to a complex problem statement. The realization was humbling and reshaped my view of what interdisciplinary work can be and how I pursue it.

Ross Gore, Ph.D.
Virginia Modeling, Analysis and Simulation Center