News + Events

An August SFI working group, “Big Data In the Brain,” focused on the brain and how it manages large amounts of data – as well as the mapping of the brain itself, another kind of big data challenge.

SFI announced today that biologist Michael Lachmann will join the Institute’s resident faculty next summer. Lachmann currently is an assistant professor at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany.

IEEE Spectrum notes recent research by scientists at SFI and MIT that examined price and performance data for 62 technologies across a broad range of industries.

In an analysis published in PLOS One, SFI External Professor Carl Bergstrom and collaborators show that despite encouraging progress, subtle gender disparities persist in academia.

Research by SFI Professor Sam Bowles on the co-evolution of agriculture and private property features prominently in a review in Current Biology about scientists' current understanding of the transition from foraging to farming.

In PNAS, SFI's Rogier Braakman reviews two scientists' recent progress in simulating prebiotic chemistry at deep-sea hydrothermal vents and puts the research in the context of what we still don't know about life's beginnings.

This summer's Hollywood blockbuster Elysium depicts a future society with an abundance of 'guard labor,' expected in a society with a high degree of economic inequality, according to a 2005 SFI working paper.

SFI announced today that Sidney Redner will join the Institute's resident faculty in July 2014. Redner now chairs the physics department at Boston University.

In a recent paper, SFI External Professor Morten Christiansen and co-authors review recent contributions of network theory to the cognitive sciences.

In an opinion piece in PNAS, SFI Professor Cris Moore, SFI External Professor Raissa D'Souza, and collaborators call for a transdisciplinary science of power grid reliability informed by improved modeling.

In a paper in Science, SFI External Professor Matthew Jackson and collaborators at Stanford and MIT show that microloan programs in India were more successful when well-connected people helped spread the word.

SFI External Professor Aaron Clauset's research to find statistical patterns underlying large datasets, including data about terrorism, is featured in the Denver Westword News.

Econophysics is getting another look in the wake of recent financial crises and market downturns that classically trained economists failed to foresee, according to a column in the Wall Street Journal.

A June SFI Business Network topical meeting in Austin on innovation drew 100 artists, musicians, business executives, entrepreneurs, academics, investors, and reporters, according to an article in Silicon Hills (Austin/San Antonio).

Cities have been compared to everything from beehives to river networks, but most of these metaphors fall short. SFI Professor Luis Bettencourt looks to the data to suggest a new way of thinking about how cities function and grow.

SFI External Professor Elhanan Borenstein and graduate student Roie Levy model species interactions in the human microbiome and show that microbes that fiercely compete are more likely to cohabitate in an individual.

In Nature this week, SFI External Professor Andreas Wagner and University of Zurich colleague Aditya Barve, by simulating changes in an organism’s metabolism, show that most evolved traits may emerge as non-crucial "exaptations" rather than as selection-advantageous adaptations.

In delivering the 2013 Pardee Distinguished Lecture at Boston University, SFI Distinguished Professor Geoffrey West described how the rapid pace of urbanization is likely to both bring challenges and prompt innovative solutions.

What’s the shortest path from point A to point B? If your junior high geometry teacher is to be believed, the answer is a straight line. But what if you start from current Hollywood blockbusters and want to introduce yourself to the films of the French New Wave?

Quantum computation holds the promise of fast computing and breakthrough decryption of sensitive information. An SFI working group in August brings together experts in quantum information to tackle questions at the frontiers of the field.