From Conway to LangGraph

Agent Systems for Physicists in the LLM Era

A 48-hour Master's course bridging Cellular Automata and Modern AI Agents

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🎯 Course Overview

"How do simple local rules give rise to complex global behavior?"

This course explores emergence — from Conway's cellular automata (1970) to today's multi-agent LLM systems. Students learn to:

• 🧮 Formalize emergence using statistical mechanics & information theory
• 💻 Simulate agent systems from first principles (Python/Mesa)
• 🤖 Build AI agents using foundation models (LangChain/LangGraph)
• 🔬 Apply these tools to physics research problems

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📚 Course Structure

12 weeks • 48 hours • Theory + Hands-on Labs

Weeks	Topic	Key Concepts	Tools
1	Cellular Automata	Emergence, Wolfram's classes	NumPy, Matplotlib
2	Game of Life	Emergence, Entropy and Irreversibility	NumPy, Matplotlib
3-4	Statistical Mechanics of Agents	Scelling Model,Phase transitions, Self organized ciritcality, mean-field theory	Mesa, Python
5-6	RL & Evolutionary Learning	Q-learning, MARL, genetic algorithms	Gymnasium, NumPy
7-8	Foundation Models	Transformers, prompting, tool use	Ollama, OpenAI API
9-10	LangChain & LangGraph	Chains, agents, memory, tools	LangChain, ChromaDB
11-12	Multi-Agent Systems	Coordination, collaboration, emergence	LangGraph, AutoGen

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🚀 Quick Start

Prerequisites

• Background: Physics (statistical mechanics, dynamical systems)
• Programming: Python intermediate (OOP, NumPy)

Installation (5 minutes)

# 1. Clone repository
git clone https://github.com/mirko-degli-esposti/conway-to-langgraph.git
cd conway-to-langgraph

# 2. Create environment
conda env create -f environment.yml
conda activate conway-langgraph

# 3. Verify setup
python scripts/verify_setup.py

# 4. Launch Jupyter
jupyter lab

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📖 How to Use This Repository

For Students

1. Each week:
   • Read weekXX_topic/README.md for overview
   • Complete Jupyter notebooks in notebooks/
   • Solve exercises in `exercises/

📅 Course Calendar

[https://www.unibo.it/en/study/course-units-transferable-skills-moocs/course-unit-catalogue/course-unit/2025/535121/orariolezioni]

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📜 License

• Course Materials: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 - Free for educational use
• Code Examples: MIT License - Free to use/modify
• Attributions: See CREDITS.md

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👨‍🏫 Instructor

Mirko Degli Esposti
[Full Prof. in Mathematical Physics, Department of Physics and Astronomy]
[University of Bologna]

Contact:

• 📧 Email: [mirko.degliesposti@unibo.it]

🗺️ Repository Navigation

📦 conway-to-langgraph/
 ┣ 📂 week01_elementary_ca/      ← Start here!
 ┣ 📂 week02_game_of_life/
 ┣ 📂 week03...../               ← Setup, bibliography, syllabus
 ┣ 📜 README.md                  ← You are here!

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Ready to explore emergence from Conway to LangGraph? 🚀

Get Started →

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Last updated: February 2026