Institute for Complex Adaptive Matter

The Institute for Complex Adaptive Matter (ICAM) is a multicampus collective of scientists studying emergent phenomena in biology, chemistry and physics and in wider context.

It is generally acknowledged that many of the key challenges and opportunities in the study of matter involve understanding complex and collective phenomena. Because these challenges frequently fall at the boundaries between conventional scientific disciplines, there is an urgent need to create new kinds of thinking and institutions capable of exploiting these opportunities. At the core of this new enterprise in the study of matter is the search for an understanding of emergent behavior  phenomena whose ultimate cause involves interactions between many simple units but which cannot be easily predicted from knowledge of the component parts alone. Our shorthand designation for soft, hard, and living matter exhibiting emergent phenomena is complex adaptive matter.

Because the collective phenomena of assembled systems are rarely a simple function of the well understood properties of the pieces (understanding atoms well does not give you a theory of proteins!), the goal is shifted to finding the appropriate organizing principles at given length and time scales that properly characterize emergent behavior. Not only does this emerging science transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries, but the rapid scale of change makes it desirable to approach their study with a dynamic institution capable of adapting quickly as new ideas and opportunities arise, a task that has proved difficult for traditional agencies and institutions.

It is this primary scientific strategy and philosophy that underlies the International Institute for Complex Adaptive Matter (I2CAM), an open distributed experiment-based dynamic institution whose purpose is advancing international materials research and developing an internationally competitive generation of materials researchers who study emergent behavior in hard, soft, and living matter. I2CAM is the international component of the Institute for Complex Adaptive Matter, which was established in March, 1999, and became, in April, 2002, a Multidisciplinary Research Program of the University of California. With an office on the UC Davis campus and reporting to Lawrence Coleman, UC Vice-Provost for Research, through the ICAM Board of Governors, it significantly extends ICAM’s international activities while building upon ICAM's domestic record of success as a distributed multi-institutional partnership. ICAM's scientific agenda is to identify major new research themes in complex adaptive matter and to nucleate and conduct collaborative research and scientific training that draws from the chemical, physical and biological viewpoint on these themes. I2CAM has a goal no less ambitious than providing international leadership in the training of future generations of researchers in the study of emergent matter. I2CAM and ICAM have as members nineteen leading universities/laboratories in the US, eight member/affiliate institutes or consortia in Europe (representing overall eighteen different centers of materials research), and two new members from Japan.

I2CAM provides funding for extended period junior scientist research between international affiliates, short research trips for meetings or facilities visits for junior scientists, and supports five international short workshops and one advanced workshop in Cargese each year. In addition, the I2CAM web pages will become an important tool for both public scientific outreach and research communication among members.