Simon DeDeo

Omidyar Fellow, 2009-2012

As a Research Fellow at SFI, Simon DeDeo works on questions of computation in the natural world: how things that evolved -- in contrast to things humans built -- process information.

Drawing on his training in the mathematical sciences, he takes advantage of SFI's transdisciplinary environment to investigate the emergence of collective phenomena in biological and social systems. In many cases, these allow groups to solve problems better than any of their individual parts. At SFI he combines methods developed to study, on the one hand, "unintelligent" physical phenomena, and on the other hand, engineered systems, to study evolved and adaptive phenomena in the living world. He works in collaboration with researchers in fields ranging from neuroscience to animal behavior to human social systems.

Simon holds an A.B. in astrophysics from Harvard, a Master’s in applied mathematics and theoretical physics from Cambridge University, and a Ph.D. in astrophysical sciences from Princeton University. His recent past includes post doctoral fellowships at the Institute for Physics and Mathematics of the Universe at the University of Tokyo and at the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago.

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Laura Fortunato

Omidyar Fellow, 2010-2013

Laura Fortunato is interested in how evolution has shaped human family systems and how these, in turn, have shaped human social behavior. Her work combines anthropological theory and data with theoretical and statistical methods used in the study of non-human social systems. It also draws heavily on the archaeological, historical, and linguistic evidence documenting the development of human social organization.

In a series of recent studies she has looked at the origins and evolution of monogamous marriage – the norm in only 17 percent of human societies. In one study, she developed a theoretical framework to investigate the evolutionary payoffs of different marriage and inheritance strategies. Next, she used phylogenetic methods to test the prediction of an "early" historical origin of monogamous marriage generated by this theoretical framework.

Laura holds a laurea in biological sciences from the University of Padova, Italy, and a master's degree and Ph.D. in anthropology from University College London. She attended SFI's Complex Systems Summer School in Beijing in 2006.

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Hyejin Youn

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