Research News Briefs, Summer 2020

Research News Briefs highlight new studies from the SFI community published in the last quarter. The following briefs appeared in SFI's Summer 2020 Parallax newsletter. 

Read More

Coronavirus models tap SFI innovations

Lauren Ancel Meyers and Sam Scarpino’s analyses inform critical, front-line decisions on pandemic response. Much of their work relies on quantitative methods of network epidemiology, which originated at SFI.

Read More

A laboratory for policy

SFI External Professor Ross Hammond and collaborators have developed a new agent-based computer model that helps policy-makers simulate multiple variations for re-opening. It can incorporate critical factors in determining how to contain COVID-19, such as variations in age, contact networks, activity patterns, and likelihood of infection.  

Read More

Nautilus: 'The Damage We're Not Attending To'

The COVID-19 pandemic can be understood as the first complexity crisis in history, Geoffrey West and David Krakauer write in an article for Nautilus. By capturing the kinds of tradeoffs that lie at the heart of complexity crises, complexity science can help us manage the pandemic’s long-term ramifications.

Read More

More ecosystem engineers create stability, preventing extinctions

Biological builders like beavers, elephants, and shipworms re-engineer their environments. How this affects their ecological network is the subject of new research by former Omidyar Fellow Justin Yeakel, which finds that increasing the number of "ecosystem engineers" stabilizes the entire network against extinctions.

Read More

SFI's statement in support of victims of injustice

Our thoughts are with the many victims of disease, abuse, injustice, and exclusion. Black lives and Native lives matter. Our community of complexity researchers are aligned with all who are committed to freedom, justice, diversity, opportunity, and empiricism. We stand with those who strive to provide the most powerful ideas, methods, and tools pursuant to a civil and equitable society. We add our voice to the moment, defend freedom of expression, and offer all that we can in pursuit of a safer and fairer world.

Read More