Complex Systems Science / Agentic Economies
Michael D.
Norman
Ph.D. Complex Systems Science · BSc Computer Systems Engineering
Complexity scientist turned builder. I study how emergent behavior arises in decentralized systems, then I engineer products that use it. 15+ years of research, 250+ citations, 30 years across technology.
Trajectory
The Arc
1996
Cisco · Lucent Technologies · UMass Amherst
Started in networking and systems at 15. IT at Cisco, lab work at Lucent, network engineering through college. Built infrastructure before learning to think about it.
2005
Bose Corporation
Embedded systems engineering. The interesting problems weren't in the components. They were in what happened when components interacted.
2009
Complexity Scientist
PhD in Complex Systems Science at Florida Atlantic University. NSF Doctoral Fellow. Published on psychotherapy dynamics using non-linear equations (151 combined citations). The thread connecting everything since: how simple rules create complex, unpredictable behavior.
2012
MITRE Corporation
A decade applying complexity science to national security. Built MITRE Labs' complexity science capability from the ground up. Led Web3 corporate strategy reporting directly to the CEO. Presented systemic risk and DeFi centralization research to U.S. Treasury via the FFRDC. Among the first to run multi-agent PPO on NVIDIA GPUs via Unity ML-Agents days after release.
2022
Consensys
Recruited by Joe Lubin's team to design token incentive structures across the Ethereum ecosystem. Rose to Director of Strategy in the CEO's office. Published the first academic work on emergent trust in public blockchain networks.
2025
CNS Labs · Shodai · Plexmark
Building Shodai — the agreements protocol and coordination infrastructure for the agentic economy — at CNS Labs (backed by Joe Lubin). Running Plexmark as a strategic and technical consultancy. Operating production multi-agent systems daily. Studying and building with agents since before most people knew what the word meant.
Ventures
Ventures
Plexmark LLC
Strategic and technical consultancy for organizations building at the frontier of digital assets, token economics, and agentic AI.
plexmark.com
CNS Labs / Shodai
The agreements protocol. Coordination infrastructure for a world where humans and autonomous agents transact as peers. Backed by Joe Lubin.
shodai.network
Research
Research
20+ publications · 250+ citations · 15+ years
Writing
Writing
Essays and takes on emergence, digital economies, and building at the frontier.
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