Santa Fe Institute

Jessica Flack is Research Professor at the Santa Fe Institute and Co-Director of the Construction Dynamics Group. Her research program combines selectionist, constraints, mechanistic, and computational perspectives in order to build a theory of how aggregate structure and hierarchy arise in evolutionary processes. Primary motivations are to understand the conditions and mechanisms supporting the emergence of slow variables in the evolution of aggregate structures, and the implications of multiple timescales and overlapping networks for robustness and adaptability in social evolution. Research foci include design principles for robust systems, conflict dynamics and control,the role of uncertainty reduction in the evolution of signaling systems, and the implications of recursion and super-dyadic structures for social complexity and innovation. She also works on the emergence of power structures in human and animal societies. 

For more information about the Construction Dynamics Group, see http://www.santafe.edu/~jflack