Timothy Clancy

Timothy Clancy is an Assistant Research Scientist at START specializing in studying wicked mess problems, including violence and instability, as complex systems. For over 30 years Timothy has helped stakeholders in all manner of organizations understand their wicked mess problems and work towards resolving them. This included prior work at IBM where he was the Chief Methodologist of Lean, Six Sigma, and Agile supporting Fortune 50, government, and military clients to navigate their own wicked messes in strategy, business models, and enterprise transformation. It was during this role, while working at the Office of the Secretary of Defense that Timothy began applying these tools to national security problems. This work led to a deployment as a civilian to Afghanistan supporting counter-roadside bomb efforts. It was in Afghanistan that Timothy first encountered systems thinking and computer simulation methods such as system dynamics capable of mathematically modeling the wicked mess problems he'd encountered throughout his career. This led to a career change after returning from abroad, and Timothy completed his MSc in Simulation Science & Insurgency Dynamics and then a PhD in the System Dynamics of the Lifecycle of Violence and Instability of Non-State actors, both at WPI. Current research topics include understanding violent radicalization as a system, the terror contagion hypothesis for public mass killings, the emerging-state actor hypothesis for asymmetric and irregular warfare conflicts, and advancing methods for modeling social complexity through computer simulations integrated with AI.

Timothy is the founder of Dialectic Simulations Consulting, LLC. He is also a writer and video commentator, providing systems thinking and analysis on complex current events through his blog and YouTube channel, InfoMullet. Timothy also volunteers his time and research efforts to help a range of community-based groups, often consisting of volunteers and hobbyists, understand and confront harassment, toxicity, and sexual assault as a system of interactions rather than isolated incidents.