News + Events

A study led by SFI External Professor Ricard Solé shows how a new class of Turing patterns work, using synthetic biology to create them from scratch in the lab.

A review paper published in this week's Evolutionary Anthropology seeks to reconcile competing approaches in the sciences of human behavior.

The COVID-19 pandemic is accelerating the pace of automation. SFI External Professor Doyne Farmer and colleagues determined that low-wage workers face a double-whammy of being more likely to lose their jobs to automation and less likely to have the skills to switch to newly created jobs.

Scientists must learn how effectively to enter the policy arena, argue SFI External Professor Manfred Laubichler and colleagues in a recent perspective piece for Science & Diplomacy.

In his 2020 Darwin Lecture, “Cancer Evolution: From Cells to Species and Back,” SFI External Professor Michael Hochberg, who is Distinguished Research Director with the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique at the University of Montpellier, France, drew on insights from network science and his own expertise in disease modeling to provide an overview of how evolution has shaped cancer into the deadly killer it is today.

Charles Darwin formulated the theory of evolution by natural selection in 1859. Today, in honor of his birthday, we present research and reflections on evolution, which makes sense of our complex world.

In 2016, SFI External Professor Jessika Trancik and colleagues published a paper in the inaugural issue of Nature Energy showing that when it comes to electric vehicles, “range anxiety” is unfounded. Trancik’s paper has now been selected by Nature Energy Chief Editor Nicky Dean as one of his favorites from the past five years.

Nature Communications has selected SFI research into information and sociopolitical development for its Social Sciences Focus.

Rajiv Sethi and Brendan O’Flaherty argue that successful police reform begins when we grasp the complex systems that underly current departments, in their latest op-ed in The Bridge.

In a Journal of Statistical Mechanics paper published in July 2020, Paul Krapivsky and SFI Professor Sidney Redner report an idealized model for the optimal strategy to park in the very best spot that’s closest to your destination. The paper was selected by Physics World as one of  "The 10 quirkiest physics stories of 2020."

SFI External Professor Melanie Moses argues, in her recent op-ed for Nautilus, how algorithmic thinking might hold the key to a far more successful rollout.

What does ecological thinking look like? For SFI Science Board Member Simon A. Levin, adopting an ecological perspective involves thinking about the interplay between interdependence and adaptation. His op-ed appears in the Winter 2020 issue of The Bridge.

In the latest issue of The Bridge, SFI Science Board member Susan Fitzpatrick describes how efficiency can lead to fragility, and advocates for using complex systems thinking to inform our engineered social systems.

The Santa Fe Institute is accepting applications for Complexity Interactive (SFI-CI) — an advanced, guided online course in complex systems. Graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, and research professionals are encouraged to apply by March 31.

A virtual working group, “Origins of Life: The Possible and the Actual,” brings together an interdisciplinary group of researchers from February 1-5.

Science is slowly shifting away from equations toward algorithms, writes W. Brian Arthur in an essay published by the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics. Thinking algorithmically, he says, gives researchers a way to study ideas like unpredictability and emergence.

What types of infrastructure improvements will it take to speed the adoption of electric vehicles (EVs)? In a Nature Energy paper published January 21, SFI External Professor Jessika Trancik and her co-authors at MIT report a new methodology designed to identify which locations for vehicle charging stations could be prioritized

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.

Academic publishing rarely attracts praise for aesthetics, affordability, or alacrity, but all three have defined the SFI Press since its founding in 2017. Supported by Bill Miller and the Miller Omega Program, it aims to bring new research from submission to publication within a year, at trade-book prices and in unique, collectible style.

In his quarterly column for the Parallax newsletter, SFI President David Krakauer reflects on games as "a microcosm for exploring analytical, aesthetic, moral, and practical matters."