The Science Steering Committee reviews and makes recommendations to the President on all faculty appointments, workshops, ongoing research activities, and policy issues which affect how science is conducted at SFI. The SSC consists of a subset of the Resident Faculty, External Faculty and Science Board members.
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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 ...
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
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 ...
External Professor
Professor, Dartmouth College, Mathematics and Computer Science
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 ...
Vice President, Administration and Director, Business Network
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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