News and events at the Santa Fe Institute.
In podcast interview on the Santa Fe Radio Café, SFI Sabbatical Visitor Ken Stanley discusses the role of serendipity in making great discoveries and the dangers of constraint by objective.
SFI’s Board of Trustees has welcomed three new members: Fred Dotzler of De Novo Ventures, Jacques Dubois of Swiss Re America Holding Corp. (retired), and Josh Wolfe of Lux Capital.
SFI President Jerry Sabloff is among the expert authors of a new report from the National Research Council, "Enhancing the Effectiveness of Team Science," that assesses the state of collaborative, multidisciplinary scientific research.
Experts have gathered at SFI this week to explore whether human languages, passed culturally from generation to generation, and genes should be studied as a co-evolutionary process -- and how scientists might begin to do that.
In an article for the Journal of Industrial Ecology, SFI’s Luís Bettencourt and Christa Brelsford take a complex systems perspective on the problem of sustainable development, describing differing scientific approaches to its exploration.
Computer scientists have barely scratched the surface of what higher math might offer their field, so two SFI scientists are hosting a meeting of experts this week to dig a little deeper.
Research by SFI Professor Sid Redner and fellow physicist Baruch Meerson suggests that nature might be relying on large numbers of sperm to solve the "search problem" of fertilization.
Researchers are at SFI this week examining ways to understand synchrony – when seemingly unconnected subpopulations of a species rise and fall in unison.
SFI congratulates Katelynn James and Meghan Hill, both graduates of SFI’s Project GUTS program, who have won the 2014-2015 Supercomputing Challenge.
In a new study, a team of researchers used anonymized cell phone data to assess the feasibility of electrification options for rural communities in Senegal, demonstrating a potentially valuable approach to using data to solve problems of development.
In Nautilus, incoming SFI president David Krakauer explores how science and culture co-evolve, using five short accounts of some of the surprising ways scientific thought progresses.
In an interview on the Santa Fe Radio Café, SFI External Professor Stephanie Forrest explores how computer software and hardware systems might benefit from a studied imitation of living systems.
SFI's 2014 Annual Report is now available online. Here are some of the surprising tidbits you will find between its covers...
The Santa Fe Institute has selected four early-career researchers for its prestigious Omidyar Postdoctoral Fellowship. Meet the new fellows here.
A meeting at SFI this week aims to get macrohistorians' heads around all the data available today about past human societies in hopes of gaining a common framework useful to all.
What happens when an award-winning author is asked to write a mission statement…and then read it on camera? Watch the video.
Starting November 2014, SFI joined a program to host eight mentor-protégé pairs meet at the Institute’s Cowan Campus to pursue independent research projects.
SFI congratulates External Professor Matthew Jackson on his election this week to the National Academy of Sciences.
In Financial Sense, Wall Street commentator John Mauldin examines the shortfalls of traditional economic theory and the promise of a complex systems perspective.
Most new patents are combinations of existing ideas and pretty much always have been, even as the stream of fundamentally new core technologies has slowed, according to a new study led by SFI researchers.