With the new year, I’ve been invited to join the Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems as an External Faculty, and the Editorial Board of PLoS Computational Biology.

NICO is an institute dedicated to the study of complex systems, and is part of Northwestern University, in Evanston (a short train ride from Chicago). It is directed by Luis Amaral and Brian Uzzi, two of the best researchers working at the interface of networks and complex systems. I am very much looking forward to work with the faculty there, and I am very interested in the courses and conferences organized by the Center.

PLoS Computational Biology is one of my favorite journals. I’ve published seven papers in the journal so far (three last year: 1, 2, 3), and I often reviewed and guest-edited for the journal. I am very happy to join the board as an Associate Editor, and I hope this will help increase the number of submissions from ecologists, as well as foster a dialogue between quantitative ecologists and other biologists interested in the computational, statistical, and mathematical aspects of the discipline.