Every year during the University of Twente's Dies Natalis Celebrations, the Rector Magnificus presents the Professor De Winter Award, an annual publication award honouring a highly talented female academic. In 2013 the award (a cheque worth 2,500 euros) was presented to Dr Tatiana Filatova of the Institute for Innovation and Governance Studies (IGS). She received this award for her article entitled "Spatial agent-based models for socio-ecological systems: challenges and prospects".
Filatova's article was published in the journal "Environmental Modelling & Software (EMS)", a high-level journal ranking in the top 10 Environmental Sciences journals. Her publication is a review article on the state-of-the-art of computer simulations of human behaviour within the environmental sciences, and identifies directions for possible future research.
The social relevance of this kind of research - to which the winner refers in this accompanying film clip - is evident. Tatiana uses computer simulations to study critical transitions in coupled socio-ecological systems, where the economy and the natural environment interact. The models can be used as a virtual lab to understand the effect of policies under different scenarios of individual behaviour. This is exactly what the UT High Tech – Human Touch focus is about: creating innovative solutions at the interface of technology and social sciences.
Tatiana Filatova
Filatova obtained her doctoral degree with distinction at the University of Twente and now works as an Assistant Professor at CSTM, the School of Management and Governance and the IGS Institute. She has a Tenure Track position, a position reserved only for the most promising researchers. In addition, Filatova has won a VENI grant from the Netherlands Organization of Scientific Research (NWO). This is an important research grant awarded to outstanding academics who are at the start of their scientific career. Tatiana Filatova also has an extensive list of publications and is very active within international academic community.
