The goal of the SFI external faculty is to provide the best research ecosystem for the trans-disciplinary and complexity science goals of SFI.
All appointments to the SFI external faculty are by nomination only. Prior to appointment to external faculty one or more years of active involvement with the institute are required. Typically researchers that have not been to SFI are invited by a member of our faculty (resident or external) based on admiration of their work or through some form of ongoing collaboration.
Browse the SFI Phone and Email Directory.
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External Professor
Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), Intelligent Systems Lab
W. Brian Arthur is an External Faculty Member at the Santa Fe Institute, IBM Faculty Fellow, and Visiting Researcher in the Intelligent Systems Lab at PARC (formerly Xerox Parc). From 1983 to 1996 he was Morrison Professor of Economics and Population Studies at Stanford University. He holds a Ph.D. from Berkeley in Operations Research, and has other degrees in economics, engineering and mathematics.
Arthur pioneered the modern study of positive feedbacks or increasing returns in the economy--in particular their role in magnifying small, random events in the economy. This work has gone on to become the basis of our understanding of the high-tech economy. He has recently published a new book: The Nature of Technology: What it Is and How it Evolves, "an elegant and powerful theory of technology's origins and evolution."He is also one of the pioneers of the science of complexity.
Arthur was the first ...
External Professor
Leader of Max Planck Research Group, Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences
I studied mathematics and physics at the Ruhr University Bochum and received my Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Leipzig in 2001. In 2003 and 2004 I was a postdoctoral fellow at the Santa Fe Institute and at the Redwood Neuroscience Institute (now the Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience at UC Berkeley). After my postdoctoral stay in the USA I became a member of the Mathematical Institute of the Friedrich Alexander University in Erlangen at the assistant professor level. Since September 2005 I work at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences in Leipzig where I am heading the independent research group Information Theory of Cognitive Systems. As external professor of the Santa Fe Institute I am involved in research on complexity and robustness theory.
External Professor
Professor, University of Amsterdam, Institute for Theoretical Physics
I have performed research on a broad spectrum of problems in theoretical physics. My focus has been on applications of quantum field theory in fields like high energy physics, condensed matter theory and the physics of the early universe. In particular I have been concerned with topological aspects of nonlinear systems, i.e. topological excitations like non abeleian vortices, domain walls, monopoles, skyrmions and instantons and their moduli spaces. I did pioneering research two dimensional systems which exhibit topological order leading to the existence of anyons which are particle like collective excitations which exhibit very exotic spin and braid statistics properties. These anyons allow for an implementation of quantum computation that is intrinsically decoherence free. This approach also allows new answers to conceptual questions about key systems like two dimensional quantum gravity and duality in supersymetric gauge theories. I wrote some popular books on science that have been translated in ...
External Professor
Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, University of Michigan, Department of Political Science
Professor Bednar's research is on the analysis of institutions, focusing on the theoretical underpinnings of the stability of federal states. Her models seek to answer questions such as: Why does the federal government take advantage of state governments? Why are some federations stable, despite frequent episodes of intergovernmental tension? and Can the court effectively referee federalism disputes if it makes mistakes or is biased in favor of one goverment? She is also interested in constitutions: specifically, the potential that constitutional design has to affect the behavior of heterogeneous populations with decentralized governmental structures.
External Professor
Professor and Chair, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Department of Systems & Computational Biology, Department of Pathology, Dominick P. Purpura Departme
My research agenda addresses quantitative problems in evolutionary and
developmental biology by using a combination of computational,
mathematical and experimental tools. Starting with biologically
relevant models, we comb for data from existing studies, and in close
collaboration with experimentalists, we generate new data. In turn,
this data allows us to refine the models, thus guiding both
experimental and modeling processes. The ability to test models in this
way is facilitated by data generated from systematic genomics efforts
undertaken in recent years. Central to my approach is an evolutionary
perspective in examining the hypotheses arising from the combination of
theoretical model and biological data.
External Professor
Assistant Professor, University of Washington, Department of Genome Sciences
My research interests lie in the interplay between evolutionary processes and the organization of biological, ecological and social systems. My goal is to identify fundamental, universal, and generic links between the structure of complex systems and their generative dynamics, and to develop methods to draw novel insights from these links.
Science Board, External Professor
Professor, University of Colorado, Department of Computer Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering
Liz Bradley did her undergraduate and graduate work at MIT, interrupted by a one-year leave of absence to row in the 1988 Olympic Games, and has been with the Department of Computer Science at the University of Colorado at Boulder since January of 1993. Her research interests include nonlinear dynamics, artificial intelligence, and control theory. She is the recipient of a NSF National Young Investigator award, a Packard Fellowship, a Radcliffe Fellowship, and the 1999 student-voted University of Colorado College of Engineering teaching award.
External Professor
Distinguished Professor of Biology, University of New Mexico, Biology
Dr. James Brown is a Distinguished Professor of Biology and the University of New Mexico. His research interests include theoretical research in biological scaling and macroecology which in earlier macroecological research, we compiled large data sets on body size, abundance, area of geographic range, and other attributes of many species of birds, mammals, and other organisms. More recent research has developed a unified theory of biological metabolism and scaling phenomena. Secondly, his interests lie in experimental research in desert ecology. Since 1977 we have been manipulating and monitoring a small patch of Chihuahuan Desert near Portal, Arizona. The results have demonstrated competition within and between groups of seed-eating animals, predation by these animals on plants, several kinds of indirect interactions, and long-term changes in climate, vegetation, and animals on the site. One of his greatest passions is trying to convey his passionate interest in biological diversity and to helping young ...
External Professor
ASU Regents Professor and Joaquin Bustoz Jr. Professor of Mathematical Biology, Arizona State University, Mathematical and Statistical Sciences
Carlos Castillo-Chavez is a Regents and a Joaquin Bustoz Jr. Professor at Arizona State University. Carlos Castillo-Chavez' research program is carried out at the interface of the mathematical and natural and social sciences and puts emphasis on (i) the role of dynamic social landscapes on disease dispersal; (ii) the role of behavior on disease evolution, (iii) the role of behavior, environmental and social structures on the dynamics of addiction, (iv) the identification of mechanisms that facilitate the spread of diseases across multiple levels of organization.
On July 1st, 2008, Carlos Castillo-Chavez became the founding director of the Mathematical, Computational and Modeling Sciences Center as well as the founding director of the graduate field in applied mathematics in the life and social sciences or AMLSS at ASU and the founder and director of the undergraduate bachelor of sciences degree in applied mathematics in the life and social sciences. Castillo-Chavez is ...
Morten H. Christiansen received his PhD in Cognitive Science from the University of Edinburgh in 1995. He is Professor in the Department of Psychology and Co-Director of the Cognitive Science Program at Cornell University as well as External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. His research focuses on the interaction of biological and environmental constraints in the processing, acquisition, and evolution of language, which he approaches using a variety of methodologies, including computational modeling, corpus analyses, psycholinguistic experiments, neuroimaging, and molecular genetics. Christiansen is the author of more than 130 scientific papers and has edited volumes on Connectionist Psycholinguistics, Language Evolution, and Language Universals.
External Professor
Professor, University of California, Davis, Department of Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering
Raissa D'Souza is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and of Computer Science at the University of California at Davis, as well as an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. Her research focuses on mathematical models of self-organization, phase transitions and the structure and function of networked systems. Her current interest is developing methods to enhance or delay the onset of phase transitions in random graphs as well as using random graphs to model statistical properties of interacting networks, such as congruence between social networks and technical artifacts in Open Source Software, the interplay of genetic-regulatory and protein-interaction networks in biological systems, and diffusion of ideas and viruses through distinct communities. Raissa received a PhD in Statistical Physics from MIT in 1999, was a Postdoc at Bell Labs and then a Postdoc in the Theory Group at Microsoft Research. Her research and publications span the fields of statistical ...
External Professor
Director, Child Language Lab, Macquarie University, Linguistics/ Centre for Language Sciences
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I grew up in northern New Mexico, with strong interests in the peoples, cultures, and languages of the region. This was nurtured by studying Anthropology at UNM. However, my study of Spanish led me to Mexico and then South America, where I finally came to realize that my true passion was linguistics, and the study of how language is learned. The pursuit of my research questions eventually led me to southern Africa, where I carried out a longitudinal study of children’s language development for several years. This lead to a career in developmental psycholinguistics.
My research has come to focus on how children construct a grammar from what they hear around them. This has lead me to conduct comparative/crosslinguistic studies where it is possible ...
External Professor
University Professor and Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, Tufts University, Center for Cognitive Studies
Daniel C. Dennett, the author of Breaking the Spell (Viking, 2006), Freedom Evolves (Viking Penguin, 2003) and Darwin's Dangerous Idea (Simon &Schuster, 1995), is University Professor and Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, and Co-Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University. He lives with his wife in North Andover, Massachusetts, and has a daughter, a son, and three grandchildren. He was born in Boston in 1942, the son of a historian by the same name, and received his B.A. in philosophy from Harvard in 1963. He then went to Oxford to work with Gilbert Ryle, under whose supervision he completed the D.Phil. in philosophy in 1965. He taught at U.C. Irvine from 1965 to 1971, when he moved to Tufts, where he has taught ever since, aside from periods visiting at Harvard, Pittsburgh, Oxford, and the École Normale Supérieure in Paris.
His first ...
External Professor
Professor, Princeton University, Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
Parasitic worms, bacteria and viruses are a constant feature of the daily lives of most 'healthy' populations of animal and plant species. My research is concerned with the population ecology of infectious diseases and the conservation of endangered and threatened species. Over the last eight years I have studied infectious diseases in a variety of endangered and fragile ecosystems. Each study has allowed me to develop sections of a larger body of theory that deals with the role of infectious diseases in wild animal populations. The role that infectious diseases play in driving populations to extinction is one of the key unsolved problems of conservation biology. Although ecologists now realize that pathogens and parasites play a key role in regulating population numbers, infectious diseases often cause rapid declines in the abundance of threatened species and continue to plague captive breeding programs. In particular, I have been studying rinderpest in Ngorongoro ...
External Professor
CSIC Professor, Instituto de Biología Molecular y Celular de Plantas, Evolutionary Systems Virology Group
In general, my scientific interests are related with the evolutionary biology of microbes. More concretely, this interest is focused in the study, within the framework of Populations Genetics, of the mechanisms that generate and maintain the genetic variability of RNA viruses. The model systems that we use now for our experiments are the RNA viruses Tobacco etch potyvirus (TEV) and Turnip mosaic potyvirus (TuMV), the para-retrovirus Cauliflower mosaic caulimovirus (CaMV), and the viroids. I have also been exploring the endless potential of digital organisms as model systems for evolutionary studies. And finally, to avoid missing the wave of “Systems Biology” we are now developing in silico and mathematical hierarchical models of the entire viral infectious cycle.
External Professor
Associate Professor, University of Arizona, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Dr. Enquist is a broadly trained plant ecologist. His lab investigates how functional and physical constraints at the level of the individual (anatomical and physiological) influence larger scale ecological and evolutionary patterns. In particular, the lab focuses on two core areas: (1) highlighting and deducing general principles, scaling rules, and the physical constraints influencing the evolution of organismal form, function, and diversity; and (2) understanding the larger scale ramifications (ecological, evolutionary, and ecosystem) of these rules/constraints. In order to address these critical issues the lab uses both theoretical, computational, biophysical and physiological and ecophysiological approaches. Research in the lab can be summarized into four distinct yet interrelated areas: (i) The evolution of form and functional diversity; (ii) The origin of allometric relationships (how characteristics of organisms change with their size) and the scaling of biological processes from cells to ecosystems. (iii) The evolution of life-history and allocation strategies; (iv ...
External Professor
Prof. of Emergency Medicine, Director, Center for Advanced Modeling in Social, Behav and Health Sci, Johns Hopkins University, Economics, Biostatistics, and Environmental Health Sciences
A pioneer in agent-based computational modeling, Josh Epstein has recently done groundbreaking work on epidemics and bioterrorism. He has published widely in the modeling area, including articles on the dynamics of civil violence, the demography of the Anasazi, the evolution of norms, and the epidemiology of smallpox and pandemic flu.
Epstein also serves as an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute and a member of the New York Academy of Sciences and is a former Senior Fellow in Economics and Director of the center of Social and Economic Dynamics at the Brookings Institution.He is a recipient of the prestigious 2008 NIH Director’s Pioneer Award, lead investigator in Modeling and Simulation for the DHS University Center of Excellence on Preparedness and Catastrophic Event Response (PACER) at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and director of Global Epidemic Modeling for the National Institutes of Health's Models of Infectious ...
External Professor
Professor of Mathematics, University of Oxford, INET@Oxford
J. Doyne Farmer is an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute. He has broad interests in complex systems, and has done research in dynamical systems theory, time series analysis and theoretical biology. At present his main interest is in developing quantitative theories for social evolution, in particular for financial markets (which provide an accurate record of decision making in a complex environment) and the evolution of new technologies (whose performance through time provides a quantitative record of human achievement). He was a founder of Prediction Company, a quantitative trading firm that was recently sold to the United Bank of Switzerland, and was their chief scientist from 1991 - 1999. During the eighties he worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he was an Oppenheimer Fellow, founding the Complex Systems Group in the theoretical division. He began his career as part of the U.C. Santa Cruz Dynamical Systems Collective, a ...
External Professor, Santa Fe Institute
Co-Director, Center for Complexity and Collectiive Computation, Wisconsin Institute of Discovery, University of Wisconsin, Madison
My research program focuses on coarse-graining and collective computation in nature and their role in the evolution and development of hierarchical, multi-scale structure in biological and social systems. This research spans multiple levels of organization in the search for common algorithmic principles underlying the emergence of novel, functionally significant spatial and temporal scales, and ultimately new kinds of collectives. This includes study of groups of cells forming tissues to groups of macaques forming animal societies to groups of online gamers forming virtual societies. This work has involved development of novel computational techniques (Inductive Game Theory) for extracting strategic decision-making rules from time-series data and constructing causal networks or adaptive social circuits that map microscopic dynamics to macroscopic states. A major focus is on how components perceive regularities in their social environments and use this information to tune their behavior.
Research topics include computation in nature, endogenous coarse-graining, collective behavior and ...
External Professor
Professor, University of California, Irvine, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
I develop mathematical, computational, and conceptual models to study complex phenotypes.
Earlier in my career, I focused on how evolutionary and genetic processes shape reproductive and behavioral traits. It was necessary at that time to treat as a black box many of the genetical and physiological details that determine phenotypes, and to focus in a general way on how natural selection influences phenotypes over very broad assumptions about underlying mechanisms. Some examples can be found in my summary below on past research.
My research has changed in the past few years, following the great changes in modern biology. It is now possible to see below the surface of complex phenotypes to the biochemical and genetical mechanisms that control those characters. I have continued to focus on complex phenotypes as I did earlier in my career, but now with particular emphasis on how the quantitative dynamics of genetical, biochemical, and cellular ...
External Professor
Professor, Central European University, Economics,Emeritus Professor, University of Massachusetts, Economics
Herbert Gintis (Ph.D. in Economics, Harvard University, 1969) is External Professor, Santa Fe Institute, and Professor of Economics, Central European University. He and Professor Robert Boyd (Anthropology, UCLA) head a multidisciplinary research project that models such behaviors as empathy, reciprocity, insider/outsider behavior, vengefulness, and other observed human behaviors not well handled by the traditional model of the self-regarding agent. His web site, www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~gintis, contains pertinent information. Professor Gintis published Game Theory Evolving (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), and is coeditor, with Joe Henrich, Robert Boyd, Samuel Bowles, Colin Camerer, and Ernst Fehr, of Foundations of Human Sociality: Economic Experiments and Ethnographic Evidence from Fifteen Small-scale Societies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), and with Samuel Bowles, Robert Boyd and Ernst Fehr, Moral Sentiments and Material Interests: On the Foundations of Cooperation in Economic Life (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005). He is currently completing a book with ...
External Professor
Associate Professor, University of Oregon Eugene, Center for Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
I am an applied and theoretical ecologist interested in biological diversity and asking questions about patterns in the distribution and abundance of species. The overarching aim of my work is to understand the forces that organize heterogeneous ecological systems, and to apply this understanding to help inform conservation policy and management decisions. I use interdisciplinary approaches at the interface of microbiology, ecology, mathematics, informatics, and computer science. Current systems of study include soil microbial communities in marine, alpine and mediterranean systems. Specific attention has been directed to exploring patterns and principles that may be common to microbes, plants and animals.
External Professor
School for Advanced Research, Archeology and Anthropology
Dr. Gumerman is a Senior Scholar at the School of American Research, prior to which he served as interim President and CEO of the School. From 2002 to 2004 he was the Vice President for Academic Affairs at the Santa Fe Institute. From1997 until 2002, he was the Director of the Arizona State Museum and a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Arizona in Tucson. After receiving his Ph.D. at the University of Arizona in 1969, Dr. Gumerman spent more than thirty years researching the archaeology of the Southwestern United States and Oceania. Early in his career he was the Curator of Anthropology at the Museum of Northern Arizona. He taught at Prescott College and at Southern Illinois University, where he was Chairman of the Anthropology Department and Founding Director of the Center for Archaeological Investigations. Dr. Gumerman was a Resident Scholar at the School of American Research ...
External Professor
Professor , Humboldt-Universitaet zu Berlin, Institute for Theoretical Biology
External Professor
Professor, University of California, Berkeley, Environmental Science, Policy and Management
My areas of research include causes and consequences of climate change with an emphasis on the study of climate-ecosystem feedback processes, theoretical ecology with an emphasis on elucidating relationships between community structure and functional integrity of ecosystems, causes and consequences of declining biodiversity, biogeochemical processes and their disruption, and the role of ecological integrity in human society.
Current Projects
The major project now underway is a study of ecosystem responses to climate change. At the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Colorado, my students and I are artificially warming a large area of a subalpine meadow with overhead electric heaters. We monitor changes in soil microclimate, vegetation phenology and community composition,arthropod diversity, carbon dioxide and methane exchange with the atmosphere, nitrogen cycling, and nutrient status of the soils and plants. Results to date indicate that a level of warming comparable to that expected from a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide ...
External Professor
Research Professor and Professor of Physics Emeritus, University of California, Santa Barbara
James B. Hartle is Research Professor and Professor of Physics Emeritus at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His scientific work is concerned with the application of Einstein's relativistic theory of gravitation --- general relativity --- to realistic astrophysical situations, especially cosmology. He has contributed usefully to the understanding of gravitational waves, relativistic stars, black holes, and the theory of the wave function of the universe. He is currently interested in the earliest moments of the big bang where the subjects of quantum mechanics, quantum gravity, and cosmology overlap. Much of his recent work is concerned with the generalizations of usual quantum mechanics that are necessary for cosmology and quantum gravity. He is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is a founder and past director of the Institute for Theoretical Physics at Santa Barbara.
Trustee, Science Board, External Professor
Professor, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Computer Science/Engineering/Psychology
John H. Holland is professor of computer science and engineering and professor of psychology at the University of Michigan; he is also external professor and member of the executive committee of the board of trustees at the Santa Fe Institute.
Professor Holland was made a MacArthur fellow in 1992 and is a fellow of the World Economic Forum. He serves on the Advisory Board on Complexity at the McDonnell Foundation.
Professor Holland has been interested for more than 40 years in what are now called complex adaptive systems (CAS). He formulated genetic algorithms, classifier systems, and the Echo models as tools for studying the dynamics of such systems. His books Hidden Order (1995) and Emergence (1998) summarize many of his thoughts about complex adaptive systems.
External Professor
William D. Eberle Professor of Economics, Stanford University, Economics
External Professor
Professor, University of Delhi, Department of Physics and Astrophysics
External Professor
Director for the Centre for Language Sciences, Macquarie Universtiy, Department of Computing
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My long-range research goal is to scientifically understand cognition and intelligence.My own research has concentrated on human intelligence, because that is where intelligence seems to be most clearly manifested.Further, my research has concentrated on human language.It seems reasonable that of all the domains in which humans demonstrate their intelligence, language provides the richest and most direct reflection of that intelligence.I claim that human language is aconstruction of the human mind to a much greater degree than (say) vision or motor planning are.It's possible that any regularities we find in vision just reflect structure present ...
External Professor
Director, Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences
Science Board, External Professor
Regents Professor, Washington State University, Anthropology
Tim received his A.B. from New College of Sarasota, Florida in 1972 and his Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Florida in 1978. Except for brief interludes in Avignon, France, as a Northwestern Interinstitutional Council for Study Abroad professor in 1983, and in Calgary, Alberta, as a Fulbright-University of Calgary Distinguished Chair in North American Studies in 1999, his academic career to date has been at Washington State University (WSU), Pullman. He currently directs the "Village Ecodynamics" NSF Biocomplexity project and a joint WSU/University of Washington IGERT called IPEM (IGERT Program in Evolutionary Modeling). He uses agent-based and systems-level models as aids in calibrating interpretations of what happened in prehistory, with emphasis on the US Southwest, where he is a Research Associate at Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, Cortez, Colorado.
External Professor, Santa Fe Institute
Director, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin Institute for Discovery
My research is concerned with the evolutionary history of information processing mechanisms in biology and culture, with an emphasis on robust information transmission, signaling dynamics and their role in constructing novel, higher level features. The research spans several levels of organization finding analogous processes in genetics, cell biology, microbiology and in organismal behavior and society. At the cellular level I have been interested in molecular processes, which rely on volatile, error-prone, asynchronous, mechanisms, which can be used as a basis for decision making and patterning. I also investigate how signaling interactions at higher levels, including microbial and organismal, are used to coordinate complex life cycles and social systems, and under what conditions we observe the emergence of proto-grammars. Much of this work is motivated by the search for 'noisy-design' principles in biology and culture emerging through evolution that span hierarchical structures. In addition to general principles there is a need ...
External Professor
Professor, University of Arizona, Anthropology and Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
J. Stephen Lansing is a professor of anthropology at the University of Arizona, with a joint appointment in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. He is also a Professor at the Santa Fe Institute (on leave 2007), and director of Yayasan Somia Pretiwi, an Indonesian foundation promoting collaborative research on environmental problems in the tropics. Lansing chaired the anthropology department of the University of Southern California for five years and later became a professor in the School of Natural Resources & Environment and Department of Anthropology at the University of Michigan. He has been a Fulbright Fellow, a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, a lecturer at Udayana University and a researcher at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Lansing is the author of Evil in the Morning of the World: Phenomenological Approaches to a Balinese Community (1974), The Three Worlds of Bali (1983), Priests ...
External Professor
President's Professor, Director, Center for Social Dynamics and Complexity, Arizona State University, School of Life Sciences and Center for Biology and Society
Science Board, External Professor
Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering
External Professor
Professor, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Department of Physics
My research is in the area of theoretical condensed matter and statistical physics. My current work is in three areas: simulations of equilibrium critical points, granular gases and applying computational complexity theory to statistical physics.
External Professor
Professor, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Ecology
The focus of my research program is the emergent discipline of macroecology, understood as that approximation to the study of ecological systems centered in the search for general and invariant principles that underlie their seemingly endless diversity and variability. Because of its synthetic character, research in macroecology is neither restricted to a particular temporal or spatial scale of analysis, nor limited to a particular level of ecological organization, thus encompassing phenomena in both ecological and evolutionary time scales and from local communities to continental and global biotas. What matters is the question and way ecological systems are apprached. The same as in other branches of science, the search for general principles and invariants in complex systems takes the form of statistical regularities such as scaling laws. The aforementioned interests lead me to carry out research on the ecological and evolutionary implications of the body size of organisms in an attempt ...
External Professor
Kenan Eminent Professor, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, Department of Anthropology
My activities include both archaeological research and collaborative programs with descendant communities in the Maya region. I have come to appreciate that interpreting the past—writing a narrative based upon archaeological evidence (whether from Belize, Yucatán, or elsewhere)—poses great theoretical and methodological challenges as well as daunting responsibilities, the latter particularly in respect to descendant communities. My career has been one of continual engagement with the evolving challenges and responsibilities of archaeology.
Currently, I co-direct the Maya Area Cultural Heritage Initiative (MACHI, www.machiproject.org). This initiative works in collaboration with local Maya communities and NGOs seated within the community to develop programs that emphasize the value of heritage preservation. Heritage is broadly defined as both the tangibles (archaeological landscapes; inherited and inalienable objects) and intangibles (language; spirituality; ritual practice; artistic performance; and learned technologies) of cultural transmission. The goal ...
External Professor
Professor of Economics and Social Sciences; Head, Carnegie Mellon University, Social and Decision Sciences
John H. Miller received a B.A. in Economics and B.S. in Finance from the University of Colorado in 1982, a M.A. and Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Michigan in 1988, where he worked with Ted Bergstrom and Hal Varian. In 1988 he joined the Santa Fe Institute as their first post doctoral fellow. He started as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social and Decision Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University in 1990, becoming an Associate Professor in 1995, and Professor in 2000. He has been a member of the External Faculty of the Santa Fe Institute since 1989, and in 2003 he was appointed as a Research Professor at the Institute. He currently splits his time between Carnegie Mellon University and the Santa Fe Institute. From 1998 to 2001 he was the head of the undergraduate Information Systems Program at CMU, in 2002 ...
Science Board, External Professor
Professor, Portland State University, Computer Science
Melanie Mitchell is Professor of Computer Science at Portland State University, and External Professor and Member of the Science Board at the Santa Fe Institute. She attended Brown University, where she majored in mathematics and did research in astronomy, and the University of Michigan, where she received a Ph.D. in computer science, Her dissertation, in collaboration with her advisor Douglas Hofstadter, was the development of Copycat, a computer program that makes analogies. She has held faculty or professional positions at the University of Michigan, the Santa Fe Institute, Los Alamos National Laboratory, the OGI School of Science and Engineering, and Portland State University. She is the author or editor of five books and over 70 scholarly papers in in the fields of artificial intelligence, cognitive science, and complex systems. Her most recent book, Complexity: A Guided Tour, published in 2009 by Oxford University Press, is the winner of the ...
Science Board, External Professor
Paul Dirac Collegiate Professor of Physics, University of Michigan, Physics and Complex Systems
Our research is on the structure and function of networks, particularly social and information networks, which we study using a combination of empirical methods, analysis, and computer simulation. Among other things, we have investigated scientific coauthorship networks, citation networks, email networks, friendship networks, epidemiological contact networks, and animal social networks; we have studied fundamental network properties such as degree distributions, centrality measures, assortative mixing, vertex similarity, and community structure; and we have made analytic or computer models of disease propagation, friendship formation, the spread of computer viruses, the Internet, and network navigation algorithms.
External Professor
Professor, Kyoto University, Institute of Economic Research, Kyoto University
Science Board, External Professor
Senior Fellow, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Mathematical and Theoretical Biology
Dr. Perelson received his B.S. degrees in Life Science and Electrical Engineering from MIT in 1967, and a Ph.D. in Biophysics, under the supervision of Aharon Katchalsky-Katzir, from UC Berkeley in 1972. He was Acting Assistant Professor, Division of Medical Physics, Berkeley, in 1973 and a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Minnesota, in 1974. He was a staff member in the Theoretical Biology and Biophysics Group at Los Alamos National Laboratory from 1974 - 1991, a Laboratory Fellow from 1991 - 2002, head of the Theoretical Biology and Biophysics Group between 1995 - 2001, and is currently a Los Alamos National Laboratory Senior Fellow. He spent the 1978 and 1979 academic years at Brown University as an Assistant Professor of Medical Sciences in the Division of Biology and Medicine and the Lefschetz Center for Dynamical Systems, was a visiting scientist at the Mathematical Institute, Oxford University ...
External Professor
Professor, Research Director and Center Leader, University of Southern Denmark, Self Organizing Systems
Born July 7, 1955 in Helsingoer (Elsinore), Denmark. Citizen of Denmark. Permanent Residence in U.S.A. (Alien of Extraordinary Ability). Formal education, PhD Physics. Focused on representing, generating, analyzing, and controling self-organizing and related systemic processes as they are manifested in natural and human-made systems. Current and recent projects include assembly of protocells, web-based decision support systems, simulation of critical infrastructure protection, and the development of simple urban dynamics simulations.
External Professor
Professor, Boston University, Physics
I'm a Professor in the Boston University Physics Department, as well as a member of the Center for BioDynamics and the Center for Polymer Studies. For the 2004-05 academic year, I was on leave as the Ulam Scholar at the Center for Nonlinear Studies at Los Alamos National Laboratory. I am also a member of the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and General Physics, the American Journal of Physics, JSTAT, the Journal of Statistical Mechanics, and the Journal of Informetrics. My research field is statistical and theoretical condensed-matter physics. I have specific interests in non-equilibrium stochastic processes, chemical kinetics, diffusion and non-linear processes in disordered media, and the structure of growing networks.
External Professor
Professor, Dartmouth College, Mathematics and Computer Science
External Professor
Assistant Professor, UCLA School of Medicine, Department of Systems Biology
I want to use mathematical models to understand how diversity is organized, constrained, and controlled in biological systems. My models are constructed using fractal and asymmetric branching networks along with ordinary, partial, and stochastic differential equations. I analyze these models using asymptotic methods, optimization theory, dynamical systems methods, and numerical methods. I test the predictions of these models by performing statistical analyses on large empirical data sets obtained by my collaborators or compiled from the literature. I would contribute to the department by using and teaching a variety of mathematical methods and by bringing to the department my diverse experience constructing quantitative models from conceptual ideas, a suite methods for analyzing large empirical and comparative data sets, and a fresh perspective on many scientific and other applied problems.
External Professor
Director, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
Born in 1950 in Ortenburg (Germany). Training in physics and mathematics with a scholarship for the exceptionally gifted at Regensburg University. Doctorate in Theoretical Physics in 1980. Various periods of research abroad, in particular at several institutions of the University of California system (USA). Habilitation (German qualification for professorial status) in 1985, then Heisenberg Fellowship. 1989 Full Professor at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Marine and Environmental Sciences (ICBM) of Oldenburg University, later Director of the ICBM.
1991 Founding Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK); since 1993 Director of PIK and Professor for Theoretical Physics at Potsdam University. 2001-2005 additional engagement as Research Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and Professor at the Environmental Sciences School of the University of East Anglia in Norwich (UK). From 2005 - 2009 Visiting Professor in Physics and Visiting Fellow of Christ Church College at Oxford University as well ...
External Professor
Ann Whitney Olin Professor of Economics, Barnard College, Columbia University, Dept. of Economics
External Professor
Assistant Professor, Carnegie Mellon University, Statistics Department
Most of my work involves stochastic aspects of nonlinear dynamical systems, unsupervised machine learning, or some combination of the two; almost all of it uses information theory, which I find to be an invaluable tool for proving probabilistic results.
My original training is in the statistical physics of complex systems — high-dimensional systems where the variables are strongly interdependent, but cannot be effectively resolved into a single low-dimensional subspace. I was (and am) particularly fond of the method of symbolic dynamics, and of cellular automata, which are spatial stochastic processes modeling pattern formation, fluid flow, magnetism and distributed computation, among other things. Much of my earlier work involves complexity measures, like thermodynamic depth, and, even more, the Grassberger-Crutchfield-Young "statistical complexity", the minimal amount of information about the past of a system required for optimal prediction of its future. This notion is intimately related to that of a minimal predictively-sufficient ...
External Professor
University of Oxford, Condensed Matter Theory Group; The Rudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics
D. Eric Smith received the Bachelor of Science in Physics and Mathematics from the California Institute of Technology in 1987, and a Ph.D. in Physics from The University of Texas at Austin in 1993, with a dissertation on problems in string theory and high-temperature superconductivity. From 1993 to 2000 he worked in physical, nonlinear, and statistical acoustics at the Applied Research Labs: U. T. Austin, and at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. From 2000 through 2011 he worked at the Santa Fe Institute on problems of self-organization in thermal, chemical, and biological systems. A focus of his current work is the statistical mechanics of the transition from the geochemistry of the early earth to the first levels of biological organization, with some emphasis on the emergence of the metabolic network.
External Professor
ICREA-Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Life Sciences
I am ICREA research professor (the
Catalan Institute for research and Advanced Studies). I am now at
the Universitat Pompeu Fabra , where
I'm the head of the COMPLEX SYSTEMS
LAB. Since 1997, I am External Professor of
the Santa Fe Institute (New
Mexico, USA), a great place to do research in a truly
interdisciplinary environment, full of smart people. I am also member
of the Council of the European Complex Systems Society. I am member
of the editorial board of several international peer reviewed
journals. I completed a five-year degree in Physics and another
5-year degree in Biology at the University of Barcelona and received
my PhD in Physics in the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya.
One of my main research
interests is understanding the possible presence of universal patterns
of organization in complex systems, from prebiotic replicators to
evolved artificial objects. Key questions are how robust structures
develop, how ...
External Professor
Professor, University of Leipzig, Dept. of Computer Science & Interdisciplinary Center of Bioinformatics
External Professor
Assistant Professor of Engineering Systems, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
My research focuses on the evolution of technologies and on decomposing performance trajectories of energy systems. I am particularly interested in understanding the dynamics and limits of costs and carbon intensities of energy technologies, in order to inform climate change mitigation efforts. A subset of projects centers on nanostructured energy technologies and their potential to reach very low costs and carbon intensities. I received my B.S. in materials science and engineering from Cornell University and my Ph.D. in materials science from the University of Oxford, where I studied as a Rhodes Scholar. I have also worked for the United Nations, and as an advisor to the private sector on investment in low-carbon energy technologies.
External Professor
Edwin Howard Armstrong Professor of Computer Science, Columbia University, Computer Science
Traub was Head of the Computer Science Department at Carnegie-Mellon University 1971-1979 and Founding Chairman of the Computer Science Department at Columbia University 1979-1989. He served as Founding Chair of the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (CSTB) of the National Academies 1986-1992. He is again serving as Chair 2005-. Traub is author or editor of ten books and some one hundred twenty journal articles. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Complexity and Associate Editor of Complexity. His numerous honors include election to the National Academy of Engineering in 1985, the 1991 Emanuel R. Piore Gold Medal from IEEE, and the 1992 Distinguished Service Award, Computer Research Association. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Association for Computing Machinery, and the New York Academy of Sciences. He has been Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Scholar at the California Institute of Technology and received a Distinguished ...
External Professor
Brazilian Center for Physics Research and National Institute of Science and Tech
Professor Constantino Tsallis is a physicist in the area of statistical mechanics, head of the Department of Theoretical Physics of the Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Fisicas, in Rio de Janeiro (Ministry of Science and Technology of Brazil), and also head of the National Institute of Science and Technology for Complex Systems of Brazil. He obtained his title of Docteur d´ État ès Sciences Physiques from the University of Paris-France in 1974. He has worked in a variety of theoretical subjects in the areas of critical phenomena, chaos and nonlinear dynamics, economics, cognitive psychology, immunology, population evolution, among others. Since two decades, he is focusing on the entropy and the foundations of statistical mechanics, as well as on some of their scientific and technological applications. Indeed, he proposed in 1988 a generalization of Boltzmann-Gibbs entropy and statistical mechanics. This generalization is presently being actively studied around the world: a Bibliography containing ...
External Professor
Professor Emeritus, Anthropology, University of California-Irvine, Institute of Mathematical Behavioral Science
Doug White, PhD Minnesota, 1969, and born in 1942 in Minneapolis, is a social anthropologist and complexity researcher whose work includes mathematical modeling, network analysis, and simulation in sociology and economics. His fields of study include political economic and social networks, ethnohistorical sociology, comparative and long-term ethnographic studies, global political history, and the role of cohesive marriage and kinship networks in larger sociopolitical systems. Partly schooled as an exchange student in Madrid, he did graduate school as a Traveling Scholar on a National Institute of Mental Health predoctoral Fellowship at Columbia, Minnesota, and Michigan. Having worked extensively in Europe, his long-term awards include the Alexander von Humboldt Distinguished Senior Scientist in Germany, the Ministry of Research bourse in Paris, and research directorships in the Irish Republic Ministries of Finance and the Gaeltacht. He teaches at the University of California, Irvine ...
External Professor
Ronin Institute
My interests are in evolutionary theory, broadly defined. My prior work has focused on coalescent theory and genomic imprinting. My current research has continued in those areas, and has expanded into areas like human language and demographic history, altruism, cultural evolution, and statistical inference.
External Professor
Professor, Yale University, Political Science
Elisabeth Jean Wood is Professor of Political Science at Yale University and Professor of the Santa Fe Institute. She is currently writing a book on variation in sexual violence during war. She is the author of Forging Democracy from Below: Insurgent Transitions in South Africa and El Salvador (Cambridge University Press, 2000) and Insurgent Collective Action and Civil War in El Salvador (Cambridge University Press, 2003). Among her recent articles are “Sexual Violence during War: Toward an Understanding of Variation,” (in Order, Conflict, and Violence (Cambridge University Press, 2008), “Armed groups and sexual violence: when is wartime rape rare?” (Politics and Society, 2009), and “The Social Processes of Civil War”, (Annual Review of Political Science, 2008).She serves on the editorial boards of Politics and Society, The American Political Science Review, and the Contentious Politics series of Cambridge University Press. At Yale Elisabeth teachers courses on comparative politics, political violence ...
External Professor
Laboratory Fellow, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Chemistry Division
My research interests are biophysics and photophysics; bioenergetics and molecular energy transduction; energy-based scaling relationships in biological, ecologicial, and socioeconomic systems.
Science Board, External Professor
Professor of Anthropology and Curator of Near Eastern Archaeology, University of Michigan, Department of Anthropology and Museum of Anthropology
My earliest archaeological research was on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay and in the Potomac River valley, recording the remains of prehistoric camp and village sites, as well colonial farms and town sites, and learning to view the past in regional and ecological perspectives. In 1960 I went to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor as an undergraduate, and was introduced to the anthropological perspectives on the total human achievement. I became fascinated with competing explanations of the evolution of the complex social formations that dominate our planet today. At the University of Chicago, I became interested in the ancient Near East, the planet's earliest civilization, centered in southwest Asia. I did dissertation research in southern Iraq on urban societies of ca. 3000 B.C., completing a doctorate in Anthropology in 1967. I returned to Ann Arbor to join the staff at the Museum of Anthropology as ...
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