News + Events

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.

SFI and the City of Santa Fe join a federally funded initiative to find innovative solutions to local urban issues.

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.

In a new study published in the Royal Society's Interface Focus, Justin Yeakel and colleagues explore the role fruit selection may have had on the evolution of primate motor skills.

A new computational model by SFI Omidyar Fellow Marion Dumas and colleagues forecasts 50-year carbon emissions under differing political scenarios.

In a test of the limits of scientific collaboration, 15 postdocs holed up in a home in the New Mexico foothills recently for three days and nights of intense scientific research. Their goal: produce a novel research paper in just 72 hours.

The economic impact of a new invention depends on its novelty and its conventionality, according to new research by SFI's Hyejin Youn and co-authors.

A new article co-authored by a number of SFI-affiliated researchers explores the psychological barriers that drive our distinct lack of “foresight intelligence” regarding climate change and our failure to take mitigating steps.

In Quantitative Finance, SFI External Professor Stefan Thurner and colleagues suggest that a tax on interbank loans scaled to the risk each transaction adds to the system would more effectively limit financial systemic risk than proposed "one size fits all" risk taxes.

Humans aren't the only species that farms; leafcutter ants, termites, and some beetles grow their own food. A working group met recently at SFI to explore the evolution of agriculture in insects and humans.

Deploying ideas and tools from complexity science in the financial sector would go a long way toward stabilizing global financial markets, according to a group of scientists writing today in Science. 

A collaboration of international researchers, including four SFI scientists, has been awarded $8 million to extend our understanding of evolution.

Upper and lower bounds on the sizes of bacteria and the physiological tradeoffs that constrain these size limits are explored in a new paper co-authored by SFI Omidyar Fellow Chris Kempes.

A new analysis shows how tree ring data can help examine the social and demographic movements of ancient peoples. 

Harold Morowitz, a leading figure in shaping the scientific and popular understanding of the chemical origins of life on Earth, passed away March 22 in Fairfax, Va.

During a recent SFI Community Lecture in Santa Fe, Annalee Newitz compared today's urbanization phenomenon to that of the Neolithic period, when humans first became "domesticated." Watch her talk here.

Whooping cough is on the rise in the US, and the adoption of a new vaccine in the 1990s is part of the explanation. Two former SFI Omidyar Fellows propose a hybrid vaccination protocol they say could slash cases by 95 percent.

In a recent paper, SFI Professor Jennifer Dunne and colleagues present their Island Digital Ecosystem Avatars concept, which models changes to an island's socioecosystem dynamics.

The author Laurence Gonzales has been named a Miller Scholar at the Santa Fe Institute for 2016. He will be in residence at the Institute periodically over the next 12 months.

On Tuesday evening, March 15, at The Lensic in Santa Fe, Gary Marcus offered a cognitive scientist's perspective on what programmers of artificial intelligence can still learn from human cognition.