Environments are changing rapidly, increasingly due to human impacts. This makes it imperative to come to grips with the complexity of ecological systems. It poses basic scientific challenges to the fundamental structure of ecological theory, and to the assimilation of the large and increasing amounts of data about ecological systems and their environments that is becoming available.  

We address these different aspects of complex ecological systems across four research themes by advancing ecological theory (through mathematical developments, conceptual structures, and theoretical syntheses) and by promoting and facilitating computationally intensive ecological research (e.g., data mining, big data analysis, and modelling).