Professor Michael Small is the CSIRO-UWA Chair of Complex Systems and a Professor in Mathematics and Statistics in the School of Physics, Mathematics and Computing at the University of Western Australia. He serves as Director of the UWA Data Institute, leads the Complex Systems Group, and is Chief Investigator for the Australian Research Council Industrial Transformation Training Centre for Transforming Maintenance through Data Science and the ARC Industrial Transformation Research Hub for Transforming Energy Infrastructure Through Digital Engineering. Small earned his BSc (Hons) in Pure Mathematics in 1994 and PhD in Applied Mathematics in 1998 from UWA. His honours project examined the history of mathematics, while his graduate research concentrated on nonlinear dynamical systems and nonlinear time series analysis. From 2001 to 2011, he held researcher and lecturer positions in the Department of Electronic and Information Engineering at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. In 2011, he joined UWA's School of Mathematics and Statistics with an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship professorial appointment. Since 2016, the CSIRO-UWA Chair has provided him with joint appointments at UWA's Faculty of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences and CSIRO Mineral Resources.

Small's research focuses on complex systems, dynamical systems theory, nonlinear time series analysis, network science, disease transmission modelling, suicide risk prediction among young people, indigenous mental health, mental health in remote communities, and mathematical modelling and data analysis for industry processes. He has received the V. Afraimovich Award (2022), Outstanding Referee Award (2016), UWA Senior Research Award (2016), and Fellowship of the Australian Mathematical Society (2015). As Editor-in-Chief of Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science, Main Editor of Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, and Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Network Science and Engineering, he shapes discourse in nonlinear dynamics and related fields. Key publications include the book Dynamics of Biological Systems (2011) and recent papers such as A general multi-order feature extractor for reservoir computing via simplicial complexes (2026, Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications), How the hesitation mechanism suppresses misinformation spreading on time-varying networks (2026, Physica A), Replicating hypergraph disease dynamics with lower-order interactions (2026, Physical Review E), and A generalized high-order correlation dimension for strange attractors (2025, Chaos, Solitons & Fractals). His industry collaborations with BHP, Woodside, and Rio Tinto demonstrate practical impacts.

Professional Email: michael.small@uwa.edu.au