News and events at the Santa Fe Institute
On Saturday, November 2, the Santa Fe Institute and the Santa Fe Symphony presented a unique immersion in sound and science featuring a multimedia presentation by SFI 's Cristopher Moore interspersed with musical selections.
SFI’s annual Business Network and Board of Trustees Symposium in Santa Fe this weekend will explore both the promise and the limits of Big Data, as well as the value of theory in the Big Data context.
You love math. You really do. I’m not talking about the kind of math that makes cell phones work or the kind that bankers use. I’m talking about math in its purest, most natural form — the kind that moves the planets in their orbits, gives flowers their shape, and makes a chorus sound like angels.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The popular Science On Screen series continued Wednesday, May 8, with SFI's Simon DeDeo and the 1992 cult hacker film Sneakers. If you missed the event, you can read DeDeo's remarks here.
SFI's 2013 Community Lecture series debuted March 14 with UC-Boulder's Leysia Palen describing how victims, observers, and “citizen-responders” are using modern technology to participate in disaster response. Watch her presentation.
SFI's first massive open online course (MOOCs) in complex systems science, "Introduction to Complexity," has begun, but you can still join. It is free and open to anyone. Register here.
Speaking at SFI yesterday, noted climate scientist James Hansen told an overflow crowd that efforts to stem climate change will be ineffectual as long as fossil fuels remain the cheapest form of energy.
SFI's crowdfunding campaign has reached its goal. The resulting research will help scientists preserve the threatened landscapes on which indigenous human groups depend.