News + Events

Archaeologists have long had a dating problem. The radiocarbon analysis typically used to reconstruct past human demographic changes relies on a method easily skewed by radiocarbon calibration curves and measurement uncertainty. And there’s never been a statistical fix that works — until now.

To solve our most intractable and pressing scientific problems, humanity needs the best possible science to innovate solutions. The best possible science is science that is open, reproducible, replicable, transparent, and inclusive, says Open Science advocate and SFI Complexity Postdoctoral Fellow Helena Miton.

From small committees to national elections, group decision-making can be complicated — and it may not always settle on the best choice. A new mathematical framework shows that’s partly because some members of the group do research on their own, and others take their cues from the people around them.

Stanford linguist Merritt Ruhlen, a long-time SFI collaborator who co-founded the Evolution of Human Languages project, passed away on January 29, 2021.

SFI Complexity Postdoctoral Fellow Helena Miton received Central European University’s 2021 award for “Best Dissertation.” 

On average, people in larger cities are better off economically. But a new study published in the Royal Society Interface builds on previous research that says, that’s not necessarily true for the individual city-dweller. It turns out, bigger cities also produce more income inequality.

What if life evolved not just once, but multiple times independently? 

In a new paper, published in the Journal of Molecular Evolution, Santa Fe Institute researchers Chris Kempes and David Krakauer argue that in order to recognize life’s full range of forms, we must develop a new theoretical frame. 

The Graduate Workshop in Computational Social Science (GWCSS) has been a core feature of summers at SFI for a quarter-century. This year, in response to the ongoing pandemic, the 26th GWCSS was condensed into two intensive and productive days online, and students completed a homework problem centered around a question of contemporary significance.

Dispatches from ATLANTIS is a new creative editorial series from the Santa Fe Institute's InterPlanetary Project.

The newest volume from SFI Press provides researchers—both novice and experienced—who study the human past the necessary background, discussion of modeling techniques and traps, references, and algorithms to use agent-based modeling in their own work.

The external faculty are central to SFI’s identity as a world-class research institute. They enrich our networks of interactions, help us push the boundaries of complex systems science, and connect us to over 70 institutions around the globe.

This year, nine new researchers join SFI’s external faculty. 

The Santa Fe Institute is looking for creative, early-career scientists for the SFI Complexity Postdoctoral Fellowships. Apply before October 24.

We at SFI are often asked for reading recommendations, so we feel it is time to make our responses more broadly available to the public. Beginning with this first installment, future issues of our newsletter, Parallax, will feature three new recommendations on a specific theme, each from a different member of our community.

In which SFI President David Krakauer contemplates the trade-offs inherent in exchanging ideas online vs in person.

On September 1, SFI will launch a new “NEH institute,” Foundations and Applications of Humanities Analytics, to introduce early-career humanities scholars to new ways of studying culture with a wide range of computational tools.

In an essay for The New Yorker, SFI External Professor Dan Rockmore explains the stories behind famous mathematical theorems, and one that holds special significance.

Richard Lewontin, 92, a revolutionary geneticist, evolutionary biologist, and longtime member of SFI’s science board, passed away in his home in Massachusetts on July 4. 

Complexity Explorer unveils a brand-new course on the many faces of computational complexity, with SFI Professor Cris Moore. The content is appropriate for learners from any background (and no mathematical heavy lifting required).

In a new perspective piece in Nature, SFI researchers and their collaborators argue that social scientists can gather highly accurate information about social trends and groups by asking about a person’s social circle rather than interrogating their own individual beliefs.

In a paper published in Nature Communications, incoming SFI Postdoctoral Fellow Yuanzhao Zhang and former SFI external faculty member Steve Strogatz report using temporal network models to show that allowing connection patterns to change over time makes it possible to synchronize a system more efficiently.