Winter 2011 President's Message Watch a video interview with President Sabloff HERE Listen to President Sabloff's February 2012 National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis (NIMBios) interview HERE

Welcome to the Santa Fe Institute. Our winter season has been enhanced by seminars, colloquia, visitors, sabbatical visitors, working groups, and outstanding visits from our Cowan Professors. We are deeply indebted to George and Helen Cowan for their extraordinary generosity in endowing this Professorship, while deeply mourning the death this year of Helen Cowan at the age of 91.

The Miller Scholar program welcomed the noted writer Rebecca Goldstein, who will be in residence until the end of December. We also are benefiting from the continued presence of former Miller Scholar Sam Shepard, the actor, director, and Pulitzer prize-winning playwright.

We bid a fond farewell to David Krakauer, former Chair of Faculty and SFI Professor, and Jessica Flack, SFI Professor, both of whom accepted terrific positions at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. David was appointed Director of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, and Jessica was appointed Co-Director of the Center for Complex Systems and Collective Computation at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery. With their departure we welcome new Chair of Faculty Doug Erwin, a paleobiologist and long time SFI collaborator and friend, with appointments both as SFI professor and as Curator of Paleozoic Invertebrates at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.

SFI has recently embarked upon a Big Questions theme that highlights the special role that SFI plays in thinking about our world today. In order to gain new perspectives on key scientific questions, SFI scientists often reject orthodoxy and try to think broadly across disciplinary boundaries. Three of key questions on which the Institute will be focusing, supported by a major new research grant from the John Templeton Foundation, relate to such topics as the evolution of complexity and intelligence on earth; the fundamental laws underpinning innovation, creativity, and the growth of society, especially in regard to cities; and universal patterns in the emergence of complex societies.

We are striving to strengthen our research and educational activities and deeply appreciative of any support you can give SFI (see the “Support SFI” link above). We hope these winter months will be a restful and productive time for you, as for all of the SFI community.

As always, I invite your comments at

Jeremy A. Sabloff
President