I am excited to announce the appointment of David Krakauer as the next president of the Santa Fe Institute, effective August 1, 2015.
David is currently the director of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery and co-director of the Center for Complexity and Collective Computation at UW-Madison after serving as a faculty member and chair of the faculty at the Santa Fe Institute from 2002-2011. Read SFI's official announcement here.
This appointment is not a casual nod bred by familiarity. David was selected following a rigorous 18-month presidential search that included some of the top scientists and science administrators in the country. He distinguished himself as having the right leadership experience, the needed breadth and rigor, and an abundance of energy that will help keep the Institute on the forefront of exciting, risky, and transdisciplinary scientific research.
We live in an exciting time in which we face a multitude of challenges and opportunities. Specifically, the surge in data, the growing importance of distributed networks, and the prevalence of complex, interactive, and informational systems suggest that the value of rigorous research spanning disciplines has never been more important. With David as its leader, the Santa Fe Institute is ideally positioned to continue to make meaningful and transformative scientific contributions.
In discussing the concept of the Santa Fe Institute thirty years ago, Murray Gell-Mann, one of the Institute’s founders, wrote that it is important to recruit “those rare scholars and scientists who are skilled and creative in a variety of subjects.” In David, we have such an individual and more.
Please join me in welcoming David Krakauer as our next leader.
Michael
Michael Mauboussin
Chairman of the Board of Trustees
Santa Fe Institute
Read the SFI announcement of Krakauer's selection