News + Events

As the means to smelt ores and produce bronze spread through Europe, the new technology was one small part of broader sweeping changes in agriculture, animal husbandry, warfare, traditions of construction and settlement, and trade.

Theoretical neuroscientists and mathematicians gathered at SFI recently to explore new ways to let “embodied intelligent systems” – that’s robots – learn coordination. At the small working group October 8-11, 2013 at SFI, nine researchers began hammering out a new theoretical approach for enabling robots to learn to walk, for example, in much the same way infants do.

As the Institute approaches its 30th year, a group of distinguished scientists recently took time to revisit and build on questions of emergence.

Graduate students and postdocs participating in SFI's 2013 Complex Systems Summer School collaborated to develop some 15 original research papers. See their research.

An article in the Science Careers section of the journal Science describes the challenges of cross-disciplinary collaboration, mentioning SFI as a research center that has successfully formalized the practice of working across disciplines.

In an SFI Community Lecture in Santa Fe, Steven Pinker and Rebecca Newberger Goldstein asked whether human moral progress is a gift of empathy and emotion or of reason and logic.

In a series of three lectures September 10-12 in Santa Fe, SFI’s Stephanie Forrest revealed surprising commonalities between computers and organisms, then described research that blurs the distinction further. Watch her talks.

Hundreds of 5th-8th grade girls spent Saturday, October 5, with New Mexico women who have chosen careers in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and computing.

In early 2013, Melanie Mitchell taught SFI’s first Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). As she begins the course again, she offers her thoughts about the first MOOC and what the future holds for online courses in complexity.

In August, Lee was named director of SFI’s new Learning Lab, created this summer to support an important component of the Institute’s mission: inspiring the next generation of scientists. The Learning Lab will help translate SFI’s research for the general public, with an emphasis on students in kindergarten through 12th grade.

The popular Science On Screen series continues Tuesday evening, August 20, in Santa Fe with SFI's Doyne Farmer and the 1974 quirky sci-fi cult film classic Zardoz.

SFI's Maureen Psaila-Dombrowski explores ways educators can engage U.S. students in computer science. The column is the latest in a series of SFI-written "Science for a Complex World" articles.

In a June 26 SFI Community Lecture video, physicist Leonard Susskind reviews what modern cosmology can tell us about our notions of time and asks how we know the past is different from the future. Watch the video.

The four-week 2013 complex systems summer school, held annually in Santa Fe and at various times in China and South America, was the 32th SFI summer school in 25 years. The 2013 school’s 59 participants included an interesting first: a 2nd generation SFIer.

SFI and the Santa Fe Alliance for Science have recognized 13 outstanding seniors and two teachers from Santa Fe-area high schools with the High School Prize for Scientific Excellence.

In a June 4 SFI Community Lecture in Santa Fe, David Eagleman described how most behaviors are driven by brain networks that we do not consciously control, and then asks what this implies for the legal system. Watch the talk.

In a May 30 SFI Community Lecture in Santa Fe, Barbara Natterson-Horowitz drew from the latest in medical and veterinary science to propose an approach to health for doctors treating patients of all species. Watch her presentation.

SFI's 2013 Community Lecture series continued May 9 in Santa Fe, with psychologist, philosopher, author, and mother Alison Gopnik on “The Minds of Children.” Watch the video of her presentation here.

SFI Omidyar Fellow Alums Caroline Buckee and Nathan Eagle are featured in an MIT Technology Review article that explores the implications of cell phone data, especially the potential blunting the spread of disease.

Ever wonder what SFI scientists like to think about? How many countries SFI External Professors represent? Who SFI's 300-plus donors are? SFI's 2012 Annual Report contains this and much more.