SCTPLS Pre-Conference Workshop 2025

[Guastello, Stephen]

Dear Nonlinear Colleagues, 

Here is the lineup for our pre-conference workshop this year at the 35th Annual Int'l Conference of the 

Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology & Life Sciences, July 30-August 1, Colorado Springs, CO, USA !

The pre-conference workshop for the 2025 conference once again features methods for nonlinear dynamical systems analysis, but served up differently. The 2025 workshop is organized in four parts: (1) Basic concepts on nonlinear dynamics and how they are interrelated. (2) A popular method, Recurrence Quantification Analysis, and its extensions, Cross-recurrence QA and Multivariate RQA. (3) A relatively new technique, SINDy, that has broad generality across different types of nonlinear dynamical systems. (4) The last two hours will be devoted to working interactively with the workshop attendees to analyze data that they brought to the conference. All sources of time series data are welcome, and many types of nonlinear analysis for real data could be applied.

1. BASIC DYNAMICS (presented by Stephen Guastello, Marquette University). The first segment of the workshop is a high-speed romp through the forest of attractors, bifurcations, chaos, fractals, catastrophe, self-organization, and emergence. Emphasis is given to how these constructs connect. Importantly, they are all analytical, meaning that they are testable with real empirical data (and simulation studies too). Seemingly unrelated applications are often connected by some common dynamics. This workshop segment explores how nonlinear methods and applications cut across diverse content areas, and how techniques from one area may be applied to another.

 

2. RECURRENCE QUANTIFICATION ANALYSIS: Tools for Indexing System Dynamics Across Time and Scale (presented by Adam W. Kiefer and Cortney Armitano-Lago, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill). This tutorial-based and hands-on workshop introduces Recurrence Quantification Analysis (RQA), a suite of nonlinear time series methods for quantifying recurrent structure in nonlinear dynamical systems. Participants will learn the foundations of RQA, along with its key extensions—Cross-Recurrence (CRQA) for dyadic coordination, Joint-Recurrence (JRQA) for system comparisons, and Multidimensional RQA (MDRQA) for analyzing high-dimensional interaction-dominant systems. Through accessible examples and demonstrations in MATLAB, we will cover core concepts such as recurrence plots, determinism, entropy, and laminarity. No prior experience with RQA is required—just curiosity about dynamic systems and behavioral change.

 

3. SPARSE IDENTIFICATION OF NONLINEAR DYNAMICS (SINDy, presented by Alessandro Selvitella, Department of Mathematical Sciences at Purdue University, Fort Wayne, IN). SINDy is a data-driven approach that can discover nonlinear dynamical systems from data. From a multivariate time series, SINDy determines the sparsest (e.g. with the least number of nonlinear terms) governing ODEs or PDEs, using regularization methods, such as LASSO. SINDy takes advantage of the fact that most natural phenomena are described by systems of differential equations with only a few nonlinear terms and so it produces interpretable models. SINDy is a fast and robust algorithm and it has been widely applied for model identification in a broad range of research areas including fluid dynamics, chemistry, environmental science, biology, physics, epidemiology, engineering, social sciences, etc. SINDy can be used to identify the dynamics of polynomial chaotic systems, reproducing the strange attractors and therefore reproducing the fundamental dynamics. 

4. BYO DATA segment (MC’d by Bernard Ricca): Please have your data organized in a format for time series analysis, with each row of the data file representing measurements for each point in time. If you have your data formatted for SPSS or a similar statistical program, go ahead and obtain descriptive statistics for your variables if you have not already done so. From there, export your data to an EXCEL spreadsheet and a CSV version of EXCEL. Some of the analyses we could do run on programs that utilize the more primitive data formats.

For more information about the Pre-Conference Workshop and the presenters, please visit Workshops on the conference website!

Register now here to participate! 

To register, go to the conference registration from (see menu) and select the workshop box (and supply the other basic and essential information). Workshop registrations are a separate checkbox from registration for the main conference.

We look forward to meeting everyone in Colorado Springs,

Best regards, 

the Conference Committee,

Adam Kiefer, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, (SCTPLS President-Elect and Conference Chair)

Barney Ricca, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs (SCTPLS President)

Charles Benight, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs

Cortney Armitano-Lago, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Stephen Guastello, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI