The Science Board is responsible for advising on, and evaluating, SFI's general scientific agenda. The Board is composed of distinguished scientists who have demonstrated an interest in, and understanding of, SFI programs. Board composition reflects the diverse research programs of the Institute, including researchers from those disciplines represented by SFI's research themes and potential future areas of interest. Members are appointed by the President on the recommendation of the Science Board and normally serve for renewable three-year terms.
Browse the SFI Phone and Email Directory.
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Science Board
Professor Emeritus, Princeton University, Physics
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.
Science Board
Professor, Boston University, Physics and Computer and Elec. Engineering
Professor David K. Campbell received his bachelor's degree in physics and chemistry from Harvard College in 1966, Part III Mathematics Tripos, with distinction, from Cambridge University in 1967, and his Ph.D. in theoretical physics and applied mathematics from Cambridge in 1970. He has pioneered the systematic study of inherently nonlinear phenomena throughout physics. The central theme of his work is the role of nonlinear excitations--solitons--in novel states of matter. His contributions span many distinct subfields of physics from high-energy field theory to condensed matter. Professor Campbell is a leader in the emerging field of nonlinear science. His influential overview articles and his direction of the flag-ship journal, Chaos, of which he was the founding editor, have established key interdisciplinary organizing principles--the paradigms of solitons, chaos, and patterns--and have played a seminal role in defining the research agenda in nonlinear science.
Science Board, External Professor
Evan Pugh Professor; Distinguished Visiting Professor, Penn State Universityp; King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences
Nina Fedoroff did her undergraduate work at Syracuse University, graduating summa cum laude with a dual major in biology and chemistry. She attended the Rockefeller University, where she earned her Ph.D. in Molecular Biology in 1972. Both her undergraduate research at Syracuse University and her graduate research on RNA bacteriophage at The Rockefeller University were supported by grants and fellowships from the National Science Foundation. Following graduation from The Rockefeller University, she joined the faculty at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and carried out research on nuclear RNA. In 1974 Fedoroff received fellowships from the Damon Runyan-Walter Winchell Cancer Research Fund and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for postdoctoral work, first at UCLA and then in the Department of Embryology of the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Baltimore. Working in the laboratory of Donald Brown, Fedoroff pioneered in DNA sequencing, determining the nucleotide sequence of the ...
Science Board Co-Chair, External Professor
Wohlford Professor, Stanford University, Biological Sciences
Marcus Feldman was born and raised in Perth, Australia, the son of Simon and Ida Feldman. Although both of his parents encouraged him to follow his own interests and passions, his father, an engineer, liked math and before long young Marcus had picked up the penchant. “He was happy that I did,” recalls Feldman.
It was anything but a passing fancy. At the University of Western Australia, Feldman first earned his bachelor of science degree in 1964, then just two years later, his master of science in mathematics from Monash University in Australia. From there, he ventured to the United States to get his doctorate in mathematical biology at Stanford University, after which he returned to Australia where he had accepted a teaching position at La Trobe University in Melbourne.
Two years later, however, Feldman was back in California, joining Stanford’s biology faculty in 1971. There, he began using ...
Science Board, External Professor
Professor of Systems Biology, Harvard Medical School, Systems Biology
Trained as a chemist, mentored in theoretical molecular biology by Peter Schuster (Vienna), educated in evolutionary biology by Leo Buss (Yale), self-taught in computer science and charmed by the social sciences through John Padgett (Chicago), I have straddled many divides that are now coming together naturally. I have taken risks in pursuing a professional trajectory shaped by the desire for a broadly engaging cross-disciplinary environment more than by career safety. This led to my decision of resigning tenure at the University of Vienna (1994-1998) to join the Santa Fe Institute on a term-limited six year position (1998-2004).
I moved to Harvard Medical School in September 2004, attracted by a vision of systems biology that emphasized evolution and molecular physiology. A theoretician for 16 years, I was transformed by living for a while among molecular biologists and seeing the opportunities that quantitative thinking and technology bring to experimental biology. I started ...
Science Board Co-Chair, External Professor
Professor and Dept. Chair, University of New Mexico, Computer Science
Stephanie Forrest is Professor and Chairman of Computer Science at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque and a Research Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. Professor Forrest received her Ph.D. in Computer and Communication Sciences from the University of Michigan. Before joining UNM she worked for Teknowledge Inc. and was a Director's Fellow at the Center for Nonlinear Studies, Los Alamos National Laboratory. Professor Forrest is an external faculty member of the Santa Fe Institute and serves on its science board. She also served as SFI's Interim Vice President 1999-2000. Professor Forrest is a member of the Adaptive Computation Group at UNM, where she studies adaptive systems, including genetic algorithms, computational immunology, biological modeling, and computer security. She is also a member of the Program in Interdisciplinary Biological & Biomedical Science (PIBBS) and the Center for Evolutionary and Theoretical Immunology (CETI).
Science Board, External Professor
James Tobin Professor of Economics, Yale University, Economics
John Geanakoplos (b. 1955) received his B.A. in Mathematics from Yale University in 1975 (summa cum laude), his M.A. in Mathematics and his Ph.D. in Economics under Kenneth Arrow from Harvard University in 1980. He started as an Assistant Professor in Economics at Yale University in 1980, becoming an Associate Professor in 1983, Professor in 1986, and the James Tobin Professor of Economics in 1994. He is currently the Director of the Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics. He was elected a fellow of the Econometric Society in 1990 and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1999. He was awarded the Samuelson Prize in 1999 (for work on lifetime financial security), and was awarded the first Bodossaki Prize in economics in 1994. In 1990-1991 and again in 1999-2000 he directed the economics program at the Santa Fe Institute, where he remains an external professor ...
Trustee, Science Board
Distinguished Fellow, Santa Fe Institute
Murray Gell-Mann is one of today’s most prominent scientists. He is
currently Distinguished Fellow at the Santa Fe Institute. He is also
Robert Andrews Millikan professor emeritus at the California Institute
of Technology, where he joined the faculty in 1955. In 1969, he
received the Nobel Prize in physics for his work on the theory of
elementary particles. He is the author of The Quark and the Jaguar,
published in 1994, in which his ideas on simplicity and complexity are
presented to a general readership.
Among his contributions to physics was the "eightfold way"
scheme that brought order out of the chaos created by the discovery of
some 100 kinds of particles in collisions involving atomic
nuclei. Professor Gell-Mann subsequently found that all of those
particles, including the neutron and proton, are composed of
fundamental building blocks with very unusual properties that he named
“quarks.” That idea has since ...
Science Board
Swanlund Endowed Chair, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Dept. of Physics; Institute for Genomic Biology
Nigel Goldenfeld holds a Swanlund Endowed Chair and is a Professor of Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He also leads the Biocomplexity Group at the university's Institute for Genomic Biology. Nigel received his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge (U.K.) in 1982, and for the years 1982-1985 was a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of California at Santa Barbara. Nigel has been an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow, a University Scholar of the University of Illinois, a recipient of the Xerox Award for research, and a recipient of the A. Nordsieck award for excellence in graduate teaching. In 1996, Nigel co-founded NumeriX, a company that specializes in high-performance software for the derivatives marketplace. He serves on the editorial boards of several journals, including The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society and the International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Finance. Nigel ...
Science Board
Professor, Stanford University, Biological Sciences
Science Board
Director and holder Frederick W. Gluck Chair Theoretical Physics, KITP, University of California-Santa Barbara
Director and holder of the Frederick W. Gluck Chair in Theoretical Physics at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics
Professor of Physics, Department of Physics at University of California, Santa Barbara, U.S.A.
2004 Nobel Prize Winner in Physics
David J. Gross received his bachelor's degree from the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem, Israel, in 1962 and his Ph.D. in physics from the University of
California, Berkeley in 1966. He then was a Junior Fellow at Harvard University
before moving to Princeton University where, in 1973, he was promoted to
Professor and later named Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics and Thomas
Jones Professor of Mathematical Physics. He became the Director of the Kavli
Institute for Theoretical Physics and holder of the Frederick W. Gluck Chair in
Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1997.
Gross has been a central figure in the development of quantum ...
Science Board
Professor Emeritus, Cornell University
The strategic goal of my research is to contribute to the development of a comprehensive theory of computational complexity. Computational complexity, the study of the quantitative laws that govern computation, is an essential part of the science base needed to guide, harness, and exploit the explosively growing computer technology. My current research interests are focused on two related areas: understanding the computational complexity of chaotic systems and the study of the computational complexity of scientific theories.
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.
Science Board
Director and Scheller Career Development Prof. of Science Education, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Teacher Education Program
Eric Klopfer is the Director of the MIT Teacher Education Program (http://education.mit.edu) and the Scheller Career Development Professor of Science Education and Educational Technology at MIT. The Teacher Education Program prepares MIT undergraduates to become math and science teachers. Klopfer's research focuses on the development and use of computer games and simulations for building understanding of science and complex systems. His research explores simulations and games on desktop computers as well as handhelds. He currently runs the StarLogo (http://education.mit.edu/starlogo) project, a desktop platform that enables students and teachers to create computer simulations of complex systems. He is also the creator of StarLogo TNG, a new platform for helping kids create 3D simulations and games using a graphical programming language. On handhelds, Klopfer's work includes Participatory Simulations (http://education.mit.edu/pda), which embed users inside of complex systems, and Augmented Reality ...
Science Board
Professor, University of California-Berkeley, Dept. of Integrative Biology
I study the physics of how organisms interact with their environments. My goal is to elucidate basic physical rules that can be applied to different kinds of organisms about how body structure affects mechanical function in nature. I combine techniques from fluid and solid mechanics with those from biology to do experiments in the field as well as in the laboratory. Using both organisms and physical models, I have studied a variety of problems: the fluid dynamics of how molecules are captured by olfactory antennae and how food particles are filtered from the water by aquatic animals, the mechanisms by which bottom-dwelling marine organisms withstand waves and currents, the evolution of aerodynamic performance in insects and gliding vertebrates, the dispersal of chemical cues and of larvae in turbulent aquatic habitats, and the mechanics of how shape changes are produced in soft-bodied animals and developing embryos. I investigate structure and function ...
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.
Science Board
Director of Center for Complex Biological Systems & Professor, University of California-Irvine, Developmental and Cell Biology
The Lander lab is interested in the molecular mechanisms by which cells communicate. We focus on two kinds of pathways–those involving growth factors and their receptors, and those involving molecules of the extracellular matrix and their receptors. We study these pathways in the context of both mammalian (mouse) development and cancer biology, since growth control and cell-matrix interactions are critical to both processes. We also focus on cells of the nervous system, to understand why the growth that occurs during developing often fails to recur after injury (e.g. spinal cord injury). We are able to work in such a wide range of areas by (1) emphasizing fundamental aspects of cellular communication that have broad applications, and (2) utilizing approaches such as transgenic and “knockout” mice, that enable the roles and effects of molecules to be studied in the context of an entire organism. One group of projects in ...
Science Board
Hannah Distinguished Professor and Director, Ecol, Evol Bio & Behavior, Michigan State University, Ecology Evolutionary Biology & Behavior
The main focus of my lab is on experimental evolution. Evolution is usually investigated using the comparative method or by studying fossils. Our approach is to watch evolution as it happens, in the context of experiments that are replicated and performed under controlled conditions. The idea of watching evolution in action is not new. In fact, Charles Darwin, in the first edition of On the Origin of Species (1859, p. 187), said "In looking for the gradations by which an organ in any species has been perfected, we ought to look exclusively to its lineal ancestors ; but this is scarcely ever possible, and we are forced in each case to look to species of the same group, that is to the collateral descendants from the same original parent-form."
Science Board
Moffett Professor of Biology, Princeton University, Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
Simon A. Levin received his B.A. from Johns Hopkins University and his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Maryland. At Cornell University 1965-1992 , he was Chair of the Section of Ecology and Systematics, and then Director of the Ecosystems Research Center, the Center for Environmental Research and the Program on Theoretical and Computational Biology, as well as Charles A. Alexander Professor of Biological Sciences (1985-1992). Since 1992, he has been at Princeton University, where he is currently George M. Moffett Professor of Biology and Director of the Center for BioComplexity. He retains an Adjunct Professorship at Cornell. His research interests are in understanding how macroscopic patterns and processes are maintained at the level of ecosystems and the biosphere, in terms of ecological and evolutionary mechanisms that operate primarily at the level of organisms; in infectious diseases; and in the interface between basic and applied ecology. Levin is ...
Science Board
Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology, Harvard University, Museum of Comp Zoology Emeritus
Richard Lewontin is Alexander Agassiz Research Professor at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University. His many books include Biology and Ideology, Not in Our Genes, and Human Diversity.
Science Board
Associate Laboratory Director, Argonne National Laboratory, Physical Sciences and Engineering
Peter B. Littlewood is Associate Laboratory Director for Physical Sciences and Engineering at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne national Laboratory.
A physicist by training, Littlewood is responsible for Argonne's fundamental science capabilities in materials science, nanoscience, chemical sciences and engineering, physics and high energy physics. He works with Argonne senior leadership to manage and integrate the laboratory's strategies, with a particular focus on materials for energy. He also holds an appointment as Professor of Physics in the James Franck Institute at the University of Chicago.
He came to Argonne from Cambridge University, United Kingdom, where he was Head of the Cavendish Laboratory and the Department of Physics at the University of Cambridge. He previously headed the Theory of Condensed Matter group at the Cavendish Laboratory. During a 2003-2004 sabbatical leave, he was Matthias Scholar at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Prior to joining Cambridge, he worked ...
Science Board, External Professor
Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering
Science Board
A.O. Hirschman Professor of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study, School of Social Science
Eric Maskin's work in economic theory has had a deep influence on many areas of economics, political science, and law. This year he will continue his work on mechanism design, repeated games, income inequality, and the theory of voting.
Science Board
Professor, Oxford University, Zoology
Robert McCredie, Baron May of Oxford, OM AC Kt, is President of the Royal Society (2000-2005), and holds a Professorship jointly in the Department of Zoology, Oxford University, and at Imperial College, London, and is a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford. For the five-year period ending September 2000, he was Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government, and Head of its Office of Science and Technology. Initially enrolled in Chemical Engineering, May ended up with a BSc and a PhD in Theoretical Physics from Sydney University. He then spent two years as Gordon MacKay Lecturer in Applied Mathematics at Harvard University, returning to Sydney University as Senior Lecturer (later Reader and, at age 33, the holder of Sydney University's first Personal Chair) in Theoretical Physics. In the early 1970's he became interested in the dynamics of animal populations (particularly the "chaotic" dynamical behaviour that can arise) and in ...
Science Board, External Professor
Professor and Director , University of Texas at Austin, Section of Integrative Biology and Division of Statistics and Scientific Computation
Dr. Meyers received her B.A. degree in Mathematics and Philosophy in 1996 from Harvard University and her Ph.D. in 2000 from the department of Biological Sciences at Stanford University. After completing a postdoctoral fellowship from the National Science Foundation, she joined the faculty of Integrative Biology at the University of Texas at Austin in 2003. Using a combination of mathematical modeling and experiments, Lauren’s research lies at the interface of evolutionary biology and epidemiology. She studies the interplay between disease transmission dynamics and the evolution of pathogens including those responsible for epidemic meningitis, influenza, walking pneumonia, and SARS. Based on this research, the MIT Technology Review recently named Lauren as one of the top 100 global innovators under age 35.
Dr. Meyers conducts research in two general areas. The first is mathematical epidemiology. Over the last five years, she has been developing new network-based mathematical approaches for ...
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 Chair, Emeritus, Santa Fe Institute
Clarence J. Robinson Professor of Biology and Natural Philosophy, George Mason University, Krasnow Institute
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.
Science Board
Professor, University of California-Berkeley, Cell and Developmental Biology
My research involves construction and testing of theoretical models of molecular, cellular and developmental processes. Current Projects include investigations into the basic physics and chemistry of protein motors, eukaryotic and prokaryotic cell motility, spatial pattern formation in eukaryotic and prokaryotic cells, and membrane geometry and protein organization.
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 ...
Science Board
Co-Director, Institute for Complex Adaptive Matter; Professor Emeritus, University of Illinois-Urbana, Department of Physics
Professor David Pines is the founding co-director of the Institute for Complex Adaptive Matter (a multicampus research program of the University of California) and Research Professor of Physics and Professor Emeritus of Physics and Electrical and Computer Engineering in the Center for Advanced Study, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His seminal contributions to the theory of many-body systems and to theoretical astrophysics have been recognized by two Guggenheim Fellowships, the Feenberg Medal, Friemann, Dirac, and Drucker Prizes, and by his election to the National Academy of Sciences, American Philosophical Society, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Russian Academy of Sciences, and Hungarian Academy of Sciences and visiting professorships at the Université de Paris, University of Leiden, Colleège de France, Caltech, and Trinity College, University of Cambridge. His current research focuses on the search for the organizing principles responsible for emergent behavior in matter, with particular attention to correlated matter, the ...
Science Board
Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics, Master of Trinity College, University of Cambridge
Martin John Rees, Baron Rees of Ludlow, is Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics and Master of Trinity College at the University of Cambridge. He holds the honorary title of Astronomer Royal and also Visiting Professor at Imperial College London and at Leicester University. After studying at the University of Cambridge, he held post-doctoral positions in the UK and the USA, before becoming a professor at Sussex University. In 1973, he became a fellow of King's College and Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy at Cambridge (continuing in the latter post until 1991) and served for ten years as director of Cambridge's Institute of Astronomy. From 1992 to 2003 he was a Royal Society Research Professor. He is a foreign associate of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is an honorary member of the Russian Academy ...
Science Board
Provost, University of Chicago, Office of the Provost
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Thomas F. Rosenbaum, John T. Wilson Distinguished Service Professor in Physics, the James Franck Institute and the College, presently serves as the Provost of The University of Chicago. In addition to his responsibilities for academic and research programs across the University, Rosenbaum serves on the Board of Governors for Argonne National Laboratory.
Rosenbaum is an expert on the quantum mechanical nature of materials - the physics of electronic, magnetic and optical materials at the atomic level - that are best observed at temperatures near absolute zero (minus 459 degrees Fahrenheit). He conducted research at Bell Laboratories and at IBM Watson Research Center before he joined the Chicago faculty in 1983.
He directed the University's Materials Research Laboratory from 1991 to 1994, the University's James Franck Institute ...
Science Board
Distinguished Professor; Director, Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Science, University of California-Irvine, Mathematics and Economics
I grew up in the beautiful Upper Peninsula of Michagan. To see where, find the part of Michigan that is above Wisconsin; my hometown is on the thumb sticking into the frigid waters of Lake Superior. By its location, you can appreciate why in the midst of winter, where we could have 400 inches of snowfall, people would bundle up and drive south to warm up in, say, Green Bay or Minneapolis. Reflecting the advantages of the region, much of my youth was spent skiing, camping, scouting, sailing, acting in class plays, involved in athletics, exploring abandoned mines, etc.; i.e., a great time! As an undergraduate at Michigan Technological University I had a triple major —social life, campus politics, and athletics, but with a strong minor in mathematics. While I always had high grades, it took graduate school (Purdue) to totally turn me on to academics—so much so ...
President, Santa Fe Institute
JEREMY ARAC SABLOFF (B.A., University of Pennsylvania, 1964; Ph.D., Harvard University, 1969) is the President of the Santa Fe Institute (2009 - ). Before coming to the Santa Fe Institute, he taught at Harvard University, the University of Utah, the University of New Mexico (where he was Chair of the Department), the University of Pittsburgh (where he also was Chair), and the University of Pennsylvania (where he was the Williams Director of the University of Pennsylvania Museum from 1994-2004 [and Interim Director, 2006-2007] and Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Anthropology).
He also was an Overseas Visiting Fellow at St. John's College, Cambridge, England. He is a past President of the Society for American Archaeology, a past Chair of Section H (Anthropology) of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and past Editor of American Antiquity. He served as Chair of the Smithsonian Science Commission and currently is ...
Science Board, External Professor
Professor, Earth and Planetary Sciences; Director, Center for the Environment, Harvard University, Laboratory for Geochemical Oceanography
Professor Daniel Schrag studies climate and climate change over the broadest range of Earth history. He has examined changes in ocean circulation over the last several decades, with particular attention to El Niño and the tropical Pacific. He has worked on theories for Pleistocene ice-age cycles including a better determination of ocean temperatures during the Last Glacial Maximum, 20,000 years ago. Dan also helped develop the Snowball Earth hypothesis, proposing that a series of global glaciations occurred between 750 and 580 million years ago that may have led to the evolution of multicellular animals. Currently he is working with economists and engineers on technological approaches to mitigating future climate change.
Science Board
Professor, University of California-Berkeley, Dept. of Integrative Biology
My research is currently directed to analyzing genetic data within and between species in the context of population genetic models. The overall goal is to show how variation among individuals in DNA sequence can be used to understand population genetic processes including recombination, selection, migration, and past population growth. At present my research is focused on (1) linkage disequilibrium and the generation of haplotype blocks, (2) the spectrum of frequencies of alleles associated with genetic diseases in humans, (3) the inference of allele age and (4) selection on alleles associated with disease resistance in human populations. I retain an interest in quantitative genetics, epistasis, and population structure.
Science Board
Professor of Infectious Disease Informatics, University of Cambridge, Department of Zoology
Research area - Population and Community Ecology (Pathogen Evolution)
We use antigenic cartography, along with genetic and population biology techniques, to study basic questions in pathogen evolution, and coevolution with the acquired immunity in host populations.
Antigenic cartography is a new mathematical and computational method which for the first time allows one to quantify and visualize fine-grain phenotypic differences among strains of viruses or bacteria (Smith et al., Science 305, 371-376, 2004).
Antigenic cartography has been developed using data on human influenza virus subtype A(H3N2), and is routinely used to analyze the global data from the World Health Organization influenza surveillance network as part of the influenza vaccine strain selection process.
Science Board
Associate Professor, University of California-Berkeley, Computer Science Division
Science Board
Dean of Science and Professor of Physics and Mathematics, New York University, Physics and Mathematics
Science Board, External Professor
Professor and Vincent J. Coates Chair in Molecular Neurobiology, The Salk Institute, Molecular Neurobiology Laboratory
I received my BA in Psychology from Harvard, my MD from Yale, and my PhD in Biophysics from Rockefeller University where I studied mathematics and physics and did experimental research in vision. My long-term goal is to understand the mathematical operations carried out by neural circuits, and my immediate goal is to understand the design principles that underlie the scalable architecture of neural circuits. The immediate goal relates to the long-term goal through the fact that circuit scalability together with the properties of neurons places constraints on the types of operations that the circuit can carry out. The current research program uses quantitative neuroanatomical and physiological data from brain regions in fish to study scalability. Fish are used because they continue to grow throughout their live, to add new neurons to their brain and retina, and to increase the size and capability of their neural circuits. Design principles identified in ...
Science Board, Science Steering Committee
Distinguished Professor and Past President, Santa Fe Institute
Geoffrey West is a theoretical physicist whose primary interests have been in fundamental questions in physics, especially those concerning the elementary particles, their interactions and cosmological implications. West served as SFI President from July 2005 through July 2009. Prior to joining the Santa Fe Institute as a Distinguished Professor in 2003, he was the leader, and founder, of the high energy physics group at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he is one of only approximately ten Senior Fellows.
His long-term fascination in general scaling phenomena evolved into a highly productive collaboration on the origin of universal scaling laws that pervade biology from the molecular genomic scale up through mitochondria and cells to whole organisms and ecosystems. This led to the development of realistic quantitative models for the structural and functional design of organisms based on underlying universal principles. This work, begun at the Institute, has received much attention in both ...
Science Board
Francis Crick Chair in the Physical Sciences, University of California, San Diego, Chemistry, Biochemistry and Physics
The research in my group is broadly concerned with many-body phenomena in biology, chemistry and physics. A major theme is understanding systems where a large diversity of long lived states is involved, necessitating the use of a statistical characterization of an energy or attractor landscape. The most notable examples are glasses, liquids, biomolecules and biomolecular regulatory networks. In the area of protein folding we are interested both in describing folding kinetics in the laboratory and the development of bioinformatically based schemes for predicting structure from sequence using computer simulation. A key concept is that the energy landscape of a foldable protein looks like a rugged funnel. This idea guides the development of both simple folding kinetics models and structure prediction algorithms. Our prediction algorithms have already shown success in folding smaller proteins whose structure was previously unknown. Similar issues of attractor landscapes also arise in higher order biological processes, such ...
Vice President, Administration and Director, Business Network, Santa Fe Institute
Chris received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1973. Following a postdoctoral appointment at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Washington DC, he returned to Yale as a faculty member with joint appointments in the Departments of Psychology, Neurology, and Neurosurgery. Chris left Yale in 1989 to lead the Biophysics Group at Los Alamos National Laboratory, a position he held until becoming the Santa Fe Institute's Vice President in 2005. At Los Alamos, Chris' group was responsible for a wide range of biophysical and physical research, including protein crystallography, quantum information, and human brain imaging. During 2000-2001, Chris served as interim director of the National Foundation for Functional Brain Imaging, a collaboration involving Harvard / Massachusetts General Hospital, University of Minnesota, and a number of academic and research institutions in New Mexico devoted to the development and application of advanced functional imaging techniques to mental disorders. Chris' research ...
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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