Santa Fe Institute

Bio

Carl Bergstrom is an evolutionary biologist studying the role of information in social and biological systems at scales from intracellular control of gene expression to population-wide linguistic communication. Working in close collaboration with empirical and experimental researchers, Bergstrom's group approaches these problem using mathematical models and computer simulations. Dr. Bergstrom's recent projects include contributions to the game theory of communication and deception, applications of information theory to understanding complex networks, bibliometric work on ranking and mapping scientific journals, and a number of more applied studies in disease evolution, including analysis of antibiotic resistant bacteria in hospital settings and models of the interaction between ecology and evolution in novel emerging pathogens such as SARS and H5N1 avian influenza.

Dr. Bergstrom received his Ph.D. in theoretical population genetics from Stanford University in 1998. After a two-year postdoctoral fellowship at Emory University, where he studied the ecology and evolution of infectious diseases, Bergstrom joined the faculty in the Department of Biology at the University of Washington in 2001.