News + Events

An April 25 SFI ACtioN meeting explores how organizations can benefit from research into people’s modern search and decision-making processes.

The working group “Thermodynamic and Computational Efficiency in Cellular Chemical Reaction Networks” meets at SFI April 23-24.

Modular — or cliquey — group structure isolates the flow of communication between individuals, which might seem counterproductive to survival. But for some animal groups, more information isn't necessarily better, according to new SFI research published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.

SFI's Sam Bowles, Mercedes Pascual, and Daniel Schrag have been elected as members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 

Across the globe in a variety of societies, royal women found ways to advance the issues they cared about and advocate for the people important to them as detailed in a recent paper published in the Journal of Archaeological Research.

Physicists at the Santa Fe Institute and MIT have shown that Markov processes, widely used to model complex systems, must unfold over a larger space than previously assumed.

A new edition of Emerging Syntheses in Science, edited by SFI co-founder David Pines and published through SFI Press, offers a fresh window into SFI's founding meetings, including never-before-published transcripts and essays.

A working group, “Hallmarks of Biological Failure,” meets to discuss the patterns of mortality, biological failure, and system collapse.

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute and the Santa Fe Institute have developed a new model to explain the evolutionary origins of empathy and other related phenomena, such as emotional contagion and contagious yawning. The model suggests that the origin of a broad range of empathetic responses lies in cognitive simulation.

A new review by David Wolpert collects recent advances in understanding the thermodynamics of computation that are grounded in computer science and physics.

SFI External Professor Laura Fortunato presented a Community Lecture at The Lensic on Tuesday, April 16, 2019, on the challenges and opportunities from using studies of social animals to inform our understanding of how human social behavior evolves.

What are viruses? Are they even alive? SFI external professors Ricard Solé and Santiago F. Elena tackle these and other questions through a complex systems approach in their new book.

The Economist highlights how a complex systems approach to economics adds critical nuance to traditional approaches to the field.

A "big dating" study by External Professors Elizabeth Bruch and Mark Newman reveals that geographic distance within the U.S. is the strongest driver of instances when two users message each other.

Working group meets to explore how and why people categorize phenomena into overly simplistic distinctions. 

Research jams, intercontinental collaborations, and lightning talks — the Postdocs in Complexity Conference is back!

On March 26, SFI External Professor Srividya Iyer-Biswas presented a Community Lecture at The Lensic on the laws that govern life, time, and chance.

Working group meets to formalize a better understanding of human cell types.

A new experiment in the "science of sync" show how complex behaviors emerge from a simple network. The work could eventually inspire interventions for heart arrhythmias, or technologies for managing modern infrastructure.

Since the 1970s, community ecologists have relied on two theories to explain the role that species interactions play in Earth's astonishing biological diversity. An SFI working group takes steps to integrate those two theories.