News + Events

Experts have gathered at SFI this week to explore whether human languages, passed culturally from generation to generation, and genes should be studied as a co-evolutionary process -- and how scientists might begin to do that.

In an article for the Journal of Industrial Ecology, SFI’s Luís Bettencourt and Christa Brelsford take a complex systems perspective on the problem of sustainable development, describing differing scientific approaches to its exploration.

Computer scientists have barely scratched the surface of what higher math might offer their field, so two SFI scientists are hosting a meeting of experts this week to dig a little deeper.

Research by SFI Professor Sid Redner and fellow physicist Baruch Meerson suggests that nature might be relying on large numbers of sperm to solve the "search problem" of fertilization.

Researchers are at SFI this week examining ways to understand synchrony – when seemingly unconnected subpopulations of a species rise and fall in unison.

In a ceremony Wednesday evening in Santa Fe, SFI awarded science teacher Dave Brooks and ten high school seniors the Institute's 2015 High School Prize for Scientific Excellence.

SFI congratulates Katelynn James and Meghan Hill, both graduates of SFI’s Project GUTS program, who have won the 2014-2015 Supercomputing Challenge. 

In Nautilus, incoming SFI president David Krakauer explores how science and culture co-evolve, using five short accounts of some of the surprising ways scientific thought progresses.

SFI's 2014 Annual Report is now available online. Here are some of the surprising tidbits you will find between its covers...

The Santa Fe Institute has selected four early-career researchers for its prestigious Omidyar Postdoctoral Fellowship. Meet the new fellows here.

A meeting at SFI this week aims to get macrohistorians' heads around all the data available today about past human societies in hopes of gaining a common framework useful to all.

What happens when an award-winning author is asked to write a mission statement…and then read it on camera? Watch the video.

Most new patents are combinations of existing ideas and pretty much always have been, even as the stream of fundamentally new core technologies has slowed, according to a new study led by SFI researchers.

An alum of SFI's 2007 Complex Systems Summer School, economist Simon Angus, talks about his research interests and SFI experience in this Q&A for our Alumni Community.

Dispersal and adaptation are two fundamental evolutionary strategies available to species given an environment. Generalists, like dandelions, send their offspring far and wide. Specialists, like alpine flowers, adapt to the conditions of a particular place. 

A new study confirms quantitatively that partisan disagreements in the U.S. Congress are worsening and that polarization is harmful to policy innovation.

During an April 8 SFI Community Lecture in Santa Fe, statistician Susan Murphy showed how a healthcare decision approach that adapts treatment to each patient over time can improve patient outcomes. Watch the talk here.

Modern, historical, and paleontological food webs share a remarkable degree of structural similarity, suggesting we might be able to predict and even influence modern food web responses to perturbations such as species extinctions, according to two SFI scientists in American Scientist.

With the nation’s power grid under increasing stress by a number of forces, the business of delivering electricity is in need of a rethink, if not an overhaul. A workshop at SFI this week asks what the future grid might look like.

New research by a team of SFI scientists finds that publicly-traded firms die off at the same rate regardless of their age or economic sector.