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School of Advanced Multidisciplinary Studies

It is curious to us why there is still so much underdevelopment in some parts of the world like Sub-Sahara Africa, despite the teeming numbers of academics and professionals produced by higher educational institutions. This school brings together leading experts in related fields listed below, to address complex challenging research and practical problems requiring such multifaceted knowledge work. It mimics world-beating entities like the Princeton Institute of Advanced Studies, but goes beyond theory to produce working models and prototypes for resolving such challenges.

Key Rationale

This enables ICRED to develop as a university of ideas and best practices, which unites communities of academic, professional, diplomatic, government, international development experts, and other specialists across the globe, with a focus on rapid socio-economic development of concerned stakeholders, countries and the world.

The key fields in mind are

Indicative Mathematical Sciences Remits

Based on research in core mathematical sciences such as mathematics, statistics, operations research and computing as well as applied sciences e.g. physics and economics, this programme innovates mathematical sciences programmes of higher educational institutions. It contributes tools and techniques used in specialist centres of excellence in multidisciplinary research. The core remits of interest are

  • Computational mathematics
  • Mathematical modelling and multidisciplinary applications
  • Deterministic and stochastic differential equations
  • Mathematical physics
  • Theoretical physics with multidisciplinary applications
  • Links with global economics, mathematical finance, and actuarial science
  • Data science
  • Further links with statistics and information modelling
  • Links with systems biology and design of robust systems
  • International schools, conferences, and workshops for training high-performing multidisciplinary academics, students and professionals in the topics.

Science, Engineering & Technology

Work in this programme covers similar remits as in the Mathematical Sciences Research Programme. It will be informed by emerging perspectives and problems whose solutions will advance the frontiers of knowledge in higher educational institutions. Emphasis is laid on knowledge transfer targeted at bridging the North-South divide in the SET areas.

Health and Well-Being

Work in this programme covers similar remits as in the Science Engineering & Technology Research Programme for the related health and well-being topics and interventions.

Special focus is on working the links between health and well-being and the 2030 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) targeted by developing economies.

Hence, our ICRED-World Health programme will continually resource and improve the state of practice in developing countries’ health, life-styles, and well-being.

In association with global health institutions e.g. World Health Organization (WHO), United Nations, Bill Gates Foundation, similar foundations, hospital trusts, national health ministries and institutions, and colleges of medicine and health sciences in universities.

Business and Finance

See related notes in the Schools of Global Economics and Capital Management, and Global Business. Additional perspectives include:

  • Creative combinations of traditional business disciplines e.g. accounting, finance, marketing, organizational theory, management and strategic thinking, with technical subjects in mathematical sciences
  • Proactive thinking in emerging areas of research of vital importance to the world e.g. global emissions and carbon trading and accounting, and their statistical modelling requirements
  • Facilitating learners’ successes in International Financial Certification Programmessuch as the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) training, with an emphasis on developing and emerging economies.
  • Adapting the programmes to the peculiarities of these economies, whilst retaining the global objectives of the training
  • Convening international conferences on business and financial topics of global importance
  • An emphasis on using multidisciplinary knowledge to resolve wicked problems in economic systems.

Social sciences and Humanities

This programme covers research and practice in the social sciences and humanities fields e.g. sociology, economics, political science, development studies, etc. The emphasis, however, is on interfacing these disciplines within problem contexts to produce new knowledge and new practices that impact the world significantly. Hence, we take interest in such topics as:

  • socio-technical systems and their links to cybernetics;
  • technology-based innovations;
  • development studies and informatics;
  • the sociology of science, human sociality, rationality and heuristics;
  • the philosophy of social science;
  • the psychology of work and human performance;
  • model-based knowledge management;
  • technology for social action;
  • networks: theory and applications
  • social networking and social marketing;
  • strategic negotiations and conflict resolution;
  • educational applications of new technologies (digital literacy)
  • work-life balance, ethical management, and world development
  • Social surveys and political economy scorecarding;
  • Science and Society.

Complexity Science and Complex Systems

It is interesting to be able to combine insights from appropriate disciplines in our quest to map the unfurling of future events and strategic issues facing the world.

Examples are world economic development, global climate change initiatives, and changes in world demographics e.g. increasing longevity of older population segments in the developed world, and their implications for pensions and care of the elderly, among others.

Related to these future studies is the increasing complexity of factors and policy environments affecting control of complex systems. An instance of this is the complexity of new financial products and its affect on global financial crises.

But complexity has two faces – organizational complexity and complexity science – with the latter linked to mathematical sciences, critical mass ideas, cascades and avalanches in chaotic systems.

We can say that organizational complexity is an interpretation of theoretical results in complexity science around organizational experiences.

We take both perspectives into play and seek to leverage the combined knowledge in organizational performance or the performance of closed or open systems with complex interactions. 

This philosophy has powerful implications for the design of mechanisms that enhance such performances. We thus:

  • view single individuals, teams of individuals and the organizations they engender as systems amenable to performance improvements, based on combined perspectives from mathematical modelling, complexity sciences, knowledge management, psychology of work and human performance, heuristics and software engineering;
  • Create  anti-fragile frameworks and systems that enhance related performances;
  • Explore how studies in futurology and complexity map future scenarios in world systems decades ahead e.g. 2015 MDGs, Nigeria’s Vision 2020, Kenya’s Vision 2030, and what the world will look like in 2030.
  • Develop related interventions that will spur socio-economic progress of mostly developing and emerging nations.

Related spin-offs

  • Patrick Oseloka Ezepue Institutes (Oselux Institutes): comprising of 7 key strands in the above fields and devoted to developing and implementing disruptive technologies which use core expertise summarised above, especially in tandem with each other and research results from other ICRED Research and Enterprise Development Schools, to address key national, continental, and global challenging problems facing humankind in different areas of the world;
  • In partnership with leading traditional and technical universities and polytechnics as well as industry and government entities globally, which are connected to ICRED and The International Open University (TIOU) currently being developed by both the ICRED and The International Centre for Mathematics and Computer Sciences (ICMCS);
  • ICRED Science Academy: devoted to getting young boys and girls in primary and schools getting their hands ‘dirty’ with simple experiments in connectionist understanding of STEM disciplines.