News + Events

An article in the Boston Review written by former SFI Omidyar Fellow Nathan Eagle describes his experiences in Kenya that prompted his effort to compensate people in the developing world for tasks they accomplish over their mobile phones.

Ant colony behavior and diversity are the topics of the first two books in the Santa Fe Institute-Princeton University Press "Primers in Complex Systems" series.

In an October 13 SFI public lecture, Harvard's Yochai Benkler questions the centuries-old practice of managing people through rewards and punishment and reviews successful institutions that succeed through cooperation. Watch the video here.

The Green Fire Times features SFI’s Global Sustainability Summer School, where participants "role-play, debate, write, blog, and build computer models that could be used in real-world decision making about sustainability."

Network science is illuminating never-before-seen relationships and patterns all around us. In three lectures over three nights, SFI's Mark Newman recently described some of the insights network science offers. Watch the videos.

Network science is illuminating never-before-seen relationships and patterns all around us. In three lectures over three nights this week, SFI's Mark Newman recently described some of the insights network science offers.

Online video: In an SFI Public Lecture, SFI External Professor Tim Buchman turns to complex systems science for hidden structure within the electrocardiogram’s signals and ways the ECG might point towards better health. See the video.

The Institute has named four new Omidyar Fellows to join the six current Omidyar Fellows at SFI. Meet SFI's four new Fellows and learn about, apply for, or support the Omidyar Fellowship.

Graduates of SFI’s 2010 Global Sustainability Summer School have published opinion letters in a number of news outlets. Read their letters.

SFI is leading an NSF-supported collaboration to create a new permanent exhibit for the New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science in Albuquerque. The exhibit takes a fresh look at the origins of life. 

Several DeVargas Middle School students who are part of Project GUTS (Growing Up Thinking Scientifically), one of 28 such programs in the state hosted by the Santa Fe Institute that encourage young women and men to pursue science, technology, engineering and math careers, took time out of class to learn some real-world techniques for data collection from eight Massachusetts college students.

Daniel Rockmore, SFI External Professor and Dartmouth College mathematics department Chair, has developed a technique that sleuths out forgeries, estimated to make up 20 percent of the art market.

Steven Strogatz, SFI External Professor and Professor of applied mathematics at Cornell University, says it's traditional to teach kids subtraction right after addition.  "If you can cope with calculating 23 + 9, you’ll be ready for 23 – 9 soon enough," writes Strogatz.

Pat Kossan, The Arizona Republic, Jan. 25, 2010.

In a quest to turn out better teachers, Arizona State University is shaking up its training program for K-12 educators.

This dynamic conference encourages girls in 5th-12th grade in the Santa Feregion to consider careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (often referred to as STEM).

Chris Mooney, Science Progress,  looks at the National Science Foundation's latest Science and Engineering Indicators report. The latest figures on the relationship between science and the U.S. public can be used to support either a positive or a negative perspective.

Renowned author and Institute regular Cormac McCarthy’s light blue Olivetti manual typewriter, which he bought second-hand more than five decades ago, auctioned for $254,500 in New York on December 3 – to the shock and delight of those at SFI following the sale. 

Research conducted by Samuel Bowles, SFI Professor, and colleagues on small-scale societies, ranging from egalitarian hunter gatherers to hierarchical farmers and herders in Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America, concludes that the degree of wealth inequality in a society is based on inheritance. This variation in inequality is explained by a dynamic model in which a population’s long-run steady-state level of inequality depends on the extent to which its most important forms of wealth are transmitted within families across generations. The passing on of material things such as farms, herds and other real property, or even knowledge, skills and other valuable resources plays a large role in whether the next generation will accumulate or maintain high wealth status.