Recap: Complexity-GAINs International Summer School

This summer, 38 Ph.D. students from the U.S. and Europe gathered in Vienna, Austria, for SFI’s first Complexity-GAINs international summer school to better understand the dynamics of societies, with an eye toward preventing disintegration.

Read More

SFI Summer programs: back in full swing

After two years of online-only and postponed events, SFI's summer education programs are back in person. June brought students from around the world to participate in the Undergraduate Complexity Research, Complex Systems Summer School, Graduate Workshop in Computational Social Science, and Advanced Graduate Workshop programs. 

Read More

In a time of upheaval, what does it mean to be useful?

In a time of climate change, inequality, polarization, and pandemic, what does it mean to be “useful?” This question from SFI President David Krakauer kicked off SFI’s live online course Complexity Interactive, which ran January 10 – 28, 2022. Is it better for complex systems scientists to keep their advice simple and be understood, or to advocate for complexity and nuance yet risk that no one will listen?

Read More

New Complexity Explorer tutorial teaches Open Science

To solve our most intractable and pressing scientific problems, humanity needs the best possible science to innovate solutions. The best possible science is science that is open, reproducible, replicable, transparent, and inclusive, says Open Science advocate and SFI Complexity Postdoctoral Fellow Helena Miton.

Read More

Making music out of complexity

This summer, participants in SFI's education programs joined newly appointed external faculty member Marco Buongiorno Nardelli to create and perform a unique piece of music based on features of complex systems.

Read More

Virtual graduate workshop students explore vaccine hesitancy

The Graduate Workshop in Computational Social Science (GWCSS) has been a core feature of summers at SFI for a quarter-century. This year, in response to the ongoing pandemic, the 26th GWCSS was condensed into two intensive and productive days online, and students completed a homework problem centered around a question of contemporary significance.

Read More

SFI launches humanities analytics institute

On September 1, SFI will launch a new “NEH institute,” Foundations and Applications of Humanities Analytics, to introduce early-career humanities scholars to new ways of studying culture with a wide range of computational tools.

Read More

To find the right network model, compare all possible histories

Scientists rarely have the historical data they need to see exactly how nodes in a network became connected. But a new paper by SFI's George Cantwell offers hope for reconstructing the missing information, using a new method to evaluate the rules that generate network models.

Read More

First virtual Undergraduate Complexity Research Program a success

It takes patience and plenty of good-will to transform a dynamic and intensive in-person summer program into a virtual experience that offers genuine and impactful connections. With the support of SFI Professor and Program Director Chris Kempes and Education Program Manager Carla Shedivy, ten students around the U.S. and 11 SFI researcher-mentors proved up to the task.

Read More

Joshua Epstein receives top award for social simulation

The European Social Simulation Association (ESSA) honored SFI External Professor Joshua Epstein (New York University) with its most prestigious award — The Rosaria Conte Award for Outstanding Social Simulation. A pioneer and world leader in agent-based modeling, Epstein was among the first scientists to use bottom-up simulation to replicate the statistical macrostructures seen in complex social systems. 

Read More