Prof John L. Casti

Prof. Casti received his Ph.D. in mathematics at the University of Southern California. He worked at The RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, CA, and served as a profesor at Princeton and New York University in the USA before becoming one of the first members of the research staff at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Vienna, Austria. He has also been on the faculty of the Technical University of Vienna and the Santa Fe Institute in the USA.

He has published eight technical monographs in the area of system theory and mathematical modeling, as well as 12 volumes of popular science, including Paradigms Lost, Complexification, Would-Be Worlds, The Cambridge Quintet, and Mood Matters. His 2012 book, XEVENTS addresses the role complexity overload plays in the creation of potentially life-changing events such as the crash of the Internet or the outbreak of a global pandemic. His most recent book in Confronting Complexity, published in 2016. It revisits the topics of extreme events and mass psychology, adding much technical material as well as a detailed discussion of the concept of system resilience.

Dr. Casti is currently Director of The X-Center, a prívate research institute in Vienna focusing on the development of tools for anticipation of extreme events in human society. He is also a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Complex Systems and Enterprise at the Stevens Institute of Technology in New York. In 2017 he co-founded the company X-Event Dynamics, Inc., a firm advising clients on the anticipation and managemen of extreme events.

In early 2016, Prof. Casti received the Medal of Honor for meritorious service to the city of Vienna.