The latest news and events at the Santa Fe Institute
Class Central, a site that collects information and reviews on thousands of online courses from around the world, recently ranked SFI’s “Introduction to Complexity” online course highest among 614 other online science courses.
In two lectures, Seth Lloyd explores what happens when one system gains an advantage in collecting and processing information – an advantage he believes underlies all creation and destruction in our universe. Watch his lectures here.
A team of ecologists met at SFI recently to begin synthesizing an efficient theory that aims toward a more unified understanding of ecology.
During an SFI Community Lecture in Santa Fe, Rosalind Picard reveals some of the surprises she has discovered at the intersection of human emotion and wearable tech. Watch her talk here.
Drawing from network science, decision-making tools with artificial intelligence, and social influence theories, experts gathered at SFI recently to explore new ways to spark large-scale social change.
To prepare for climate change, urbanization, or antibiotic resistance, we need to know how the microbial world we are immersed in will respond to stress. A recent SFI meeting sought progress.
Stephanie Forrest and Melanie Mitchell recount the legacy of John Holland, a complexity science pioneer who passed away in August 2015.
On the popular podcast "Waking Up with Sam Harris," SFI President David Krakauer weighs in on whether your brain is an information processor. It is, he says, because it converts disorder to order.
New research suggests that larger crowds do not always produce wiser decisions. Moderately-sized crowds are likely to outperform larger ones when faced with combinations of easy and difficult qualitative decisions.
Watch linguist John McWhorter deliver a community lecture in which he rethinks the widely-held belief that the language we speak shapes how we experience life.
During a working group this week at SFI, roughly a dozen ecologists and computer scientists will explore ways emerging technologies might help researchers better understand why and how individuals in migrating groups make the choices they do.
Researchers meet at SFI this week to understand how two evolutionary strategies — migration and cooperation — might have co-evolved, and in what situations one strategy prevails.
Jerry Sabloff has been selected by the American Anthropological Association to receive its 2016 Alfred Vincent Kidder Award for Eminence in the Field of American Archaeology.
Researchers are gathered at SFI this week to understand what drives biological "synchrony": rapid, widespread rises and falls in populations.
This week, SFI External Professor Aaron Clauset received the 2016 Erdős–Rényi Prize for Young Scientists from the Network Science Society.
In an SFI Community Lecture May 31 in Santa Fe, artist and author Lynda Barry explores what makes us want to write, draw, sing, and dance.
SFI has maintained the highest possible rating under the independent charity evaluator Charity Navigator's new rating system.
Deciding whether two symmetries are alike is a longstanding problem in group theory, the mathematical study of symmetry. This week at SFI, a working group meets to tackle the mathematical curiosity with implications across diverse scientific fields.
In an evening ceremony last week at SFI, the Institute recognized teacher Natalie Martino and 13 Santa Fe-area high school seniors for scientific excellence.
On April 12, Carlos Castillo-Chavez unraveled the complex factors that fuel the spread of deadly diseases, and how we can use our knowledge of them to prevent future outbreaks. Watch the video here.