Alexander "Aleco" Christakis (; born 1937) is a

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

American

social scientist Social science (often rendered in the plural as the social sciences) is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among members within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the ...

, systems scientist and

cyberneticist Cybernetics is the transdisciplinary study of circular causal processes such as feedback and recursion, where the effects of a system's actions (its outputs) return as inputs to that system, influencing subsequent action. It is concerned with ...

, former faculty member of several Universities, organizational consultant and member of the

Club of Rome The Club of Rome is a nonprofit, informal organization of intellectuals and business leaders whose goal is a critical discussion of pressing list of global issues, global issues. The Club of Rome was founded in 1968 at Accademia dei Lincei in R ...

, known for his "study and design of social systems".Biography
Alexander N. Christakis, January 17, 2003.

Biography

Christakis came to the United States in 1956, and received a BA in

theoretical physics Theoretical physics is a branch of physics that employs mathematical models and abstractions of physical objects and systems to rationalize, explain, and predict List of natural phenomena, natural phenomena. This is in contrast to experimental p ...

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

and a Ph.D. in theoretical nuclear physics at

Yale Yale University is a private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, and one of the nine colonial colleges ch ...

. Later on he proceeded studying

urban planning Urban planning (also called city planning in some contexts) is the process of developing and designing land use and the built environment, including air, water, and the infrastructure passing into and out of urban areas, such as transportatio ...

, and

systems science Systems science, also referred to as systems research or simply systems, is a transdisciplinary field that is concerned with understanding simple and complex systems in nature and society, which leads to the advancements of formal, natural, socia ...

until 1970.^where? After the birth of his son

Nicholas Nicholas is a male name, the Anglophone version of an ancient Greek name in use since antiquity, and cognate with the modern Greek , . It originally derived from a combination of two Ancient Greek, Greek words meaning 'victory' and 'people'. In ...

he returned to Greece and joined the architectural firm of Doxiadis Associates which was specialized in architecture and town planning. In 1968 he was co-founder of the

, where he was a collaborator of Aurelio Peccei, Erich Jantsch and Hasan Özbekhan. Since the 1970s Christakis has served on the faculties of

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...

Georgetown University Georgetown University is a private university, private Jesuit research university in Washington, D.C., United States. Founded by Bishop John Carroll (archbishop of Baltimore), John Carroll in 1789, it is the oldest Catholic higher education, Ca ...

University of Athens The National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA; , ''Ethnikó kai Kapodistriakó Panepistímio Athinón''), usually referred to simply as the University of Athens (UoA), is a public university in Athens, Greece, with various campuses alo ...

, and the

University of Virginia The University of Virginia (UVA) is a Public university#United States, public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States. It was founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson and contains his The Lawn, Academical Village, a World H ...

. He also spent five years at

George Mason University George Mason University (GMU) is a Public university, public research university in Fairfax County, Virginia, United States. Located in Northern Virginia near Washington, D.C., the university is named in honor of George Mason, a Founding Father ...

as the Director of the Center for Interactive Management headed by John N. Warfield. In 1989 Christakis founded his own management consultancy firm CWA Ltd. dedicated to apply Interactive Management principles, and he has been CEO ever since. Christakis serves on the Editorial Boards of several journals, including ''

Systems Research and Behavioral Science A system is a group of interacting or interrelated elements that act according to a set of rules to form a unified whole. A system, surrounded and influenced by its environment, is described by its boundaries, structure and purpose and is exp ...

s'', ''Systems: Journal of Transdisciplinary Systems Science'', and the ''Journal of Applied Systems Studies''. In 2002, Christakis served as president of the International Society for the Systems Sciences. He also serves as president of the Institute for 21st Century Agoras, a non-profit organization dedicated to the evolution of civic, global, and institutional capacity for coordinated democratic decision-making using systems principles (Co-Laboratories of Democracy.) The Institute for 21st Century Agoras is credited for the formalization of the science of

Structured dialogic design Structuring, also known as smurfing in banking jargon, is the practice of executing financial transactions such as making bank deposits in a specific pattern, calculated to avoid triggering financial institutions to file reports required by law ...

in its present form. Christakis is also a partner with Dialogic Design International, a consulting firm that deploys SDD in systemic design approaches for complex organizational and systems problems. In 2007 he served on the board of directors of the Americans for Indian Opportunity (AIO), of Future Worlds Center, and also as an Advisor to the Ambassadors Program of AIO which serves indigenous people around the world. He has received numerous awards and distinctions including the Demosophia Award, the Creative Programming Award from the National University Continuing Education Association and the most prestigious medal of the Hellenic Society for Systemic Studies to name a few.

Contributions to international peace building

Christakis has been invited to support the peace process in Cyprus and the Middle East. He and Laouris led the implementation of series of mass scale dialogues using the

structured dialogic design Structuring, also known as smurfing in banking jargon, is the practice of executing financial transactions such as making bank deposits in a specific pattern, calculated to avoid triggering financial institutions to file reports required by law ...

process in the

Civil Society Dialogue project in Cyprus The Civil Society Dialogue Project followed the negative outcome of the referendum in Cyprus for the re-unification of the island (known as the Annan Plan), which took place on the 24 April 2004. A number of Cypriot peace pioneers launched the Ci ...

and in the Act Beyond Borders project in Middle East.Act Beyond Borders Initiative
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Publications

Christakis has published over 100 papers on the management of complexity in refereed journals. He is also the co-author of three books on "Technology Assessment". Books: * 2009. ''The Talking Point:Creating an Environment for Exploring Complex Meaning''. With T.R. Flanangan. Boston, MA: Information Age Publishing. * 2006. ''Co-laboratories of democracy: how people harness their collective wisdom to create the future''. With Kenneth C. Bausch. Boston, MA: Information Age Publishing. * 2005. ''Pragmatic Design Dialogue''. Articles and papers, a selection: * 1970.
The Predicament of Mankind Quest for Structured Responses for Growing World-wide Complexities and Uncertainties
. With co-authors like Hasan Özbekhan, Erich Jantsch, Peccei, ...and others (PDF) * 1987. John N. Warfield, and Christakis, A.N. "Dimensionality," Systems Research 4, pp. 127–137 * 2004.
Retrospective Inquiry of the predicament of menkind prospectus of the Club of Rome
* 2009. Interview: ''Learnings and Vistas based on revisiting 40 years of the "Global Problematique"'

Interview i
Europe'sWorld
by Heiner Benkin

November, 2009 * 2011. Interview: ''The Predicament of the Individual, Communities, and Humankind in the 21st Century

by Heiner Benkin

September 2011

References

External links

Biography
Alexander N. Christakis, 2003.

Dialogue for the Information Age Democracy, by Alexander N. Christakis, 2005. * Institute for 21st Century Agora

a non-profit organization founded by Christakis with Kenneth Bausch to promote the pursuit of democratic approaches to collective wisdom and decision making made possible with Co-Laboratories of Democracy.
Wiki managed by world-wide SDD scientists and practitioners
{{DEFAULTSORT:Christakis, Alexander 1937 births American social scientists Living people People from Heraklion (regional unit) Princeton University alumni American systems scientists Cyberneticists Presidents of the International Society for the Systems Sciences Yale University alumni