News + Events

SFI External Professor Hans Schellnhuber and collaborators model ant colony foraging strategies and suggest that individual ants’ experience play a role in foraging success.

Our Spring 2014 issue of the SFI Bulletin, “How Life Got Complex,” asks why, and how, some biological systems on Earth have evolved to be ever-more complex, even intelligent.

Two science meetings at SFI this week are exploring the dynamics behind the rise and fall of human societies, from early Norse settlements on Greenland to Zuni tribes of the American Southwest.

In a new TED talk, SFI Science Board member Deborah Gordon explains how ant behavior, her lifelong research passion, can help us better understand brains, cancer, and the Internet.

A special issue of Science explores the origins of human inequality, drawing on research by SFI Professor Sam Bowles and collaborators.

Banks can be a lot like poorly designed plumbing, according to a working paper by two SFI External Professors that asks how banking systems might be designed to minimize inter-industry shocks.

In an SFI Community Lecture Wednesday, May 14, in Santa Fe, philosopher Daniel Dennett asked: if free will is an illusion, should we conclude that we don’t need real free will to be responsible for our actions? Watch the video.

A workshop this week at SFI asks how well web-based disease trackers like Google Flu Trends actually work, and seeks ways they can be made to work better.

In an op-ed in PNAS, Martin Scheffer calls on scientists to reform the practice of science to reinforce the associative side of thinking, citing SFI as a model institution in this regard.

Mathematician Nihat Ay will join SFI’s resident faculty beginning next summer, SFI Chair of Faculty and VP for Science Jennifer Dunne announced today.

Nearly 30 years ago Seth Lloyd sought to explain the apparent directionality of time, or "time's arrow," as the increasing entanglement of particles. This year, two research teams have added strength to the then-dismisssed idea.

A recent analysis of health-related Google searches finds that searches for health topics are far more frequent at the beginning of the week than later in the week -- a recurring pattern that might help devise strategies for improved public health.

SFI External Professor Sabre Kais has edited a new book that examines the intersection of quantum information and chemical physics.

An archaeological site in Peru features mounds and linear geoglyphs likely used to mark the summer solstice and other cultural activities in an ancient society, according to a study co-authored by SFI External Professor Charles Stanish.

The Santa Fe Institute is seeking an uncommon leader to guide this world-renowned nonprofit research and education center. If you know a great candidate, pass it on.

SFI's Sam Bowles and Herb Gintis were among the "young radical economists" at Harvard in the late 1960s whose skepticism about the mainstream paradigm has since gained credibility, according to a feature in Adbusters magazine. 

Monitoring the populations of “uncontacted” tribes via Google Earth is a noninvasive way to help improve the chances of survival of indigenous human groups, according to a paper co-authored by SFI's Marcus Hamilton.

SFI Science Board member Montgomery Slatkin is among 84 new members of the National Academy of Sciences, the NAS announced today.

Cities are the greenest possible way to live together, and perhaps the only way we can mitigate climate change, according to The Guardian's Leo Hollis, who cites SFI cities & urbanization research.

Richard Florida, senior editor at The Atlantic, posits 11 reasons the United Nations should make cities the focus of its sustainable development goals. His evidence includes SFI research results.