News + Events
The latest news and events at the Santa Fe Institute
SFI welcomes postdoctoral fellow Hajime Shimao
SFI welcomes Program Postdoctoral fellow Hajime Shimao.
SFI welcomes postdoctoral fellow Vicky Chuqiao Yang
SFI welcomes Omidyar Fellow Vicky Chuqiao Yang.
Did animals rise with oxygen?
SFI hosts a three-day working group to explore the effect of increasing oxygen on the early evolution of animals.
Ready for Liftoff: SFI hosts first annual InterPlanetary Festival
SFI will be inaugurating a new annual tradition June 7-8 — the InterPlanetary Festival, which will render Santa Fe’s Railyard district a platform for imagining future human civilizations, on and beyond Earth.
Fast forward to the present: 2018 Symposium devoted to 'Complexity of Time'
May 4-5, 2018, SFI will host its annual Science Board Symposium and will focus on complex time, to kick off a new research program that seeks to understand time's passage.
An Introduction to SFI’s Visiting Faculty
Three researchers are spending several months at SFI to tackle some big questions: “Why do we sleep less as we get older?” “What do city pigeons have in common with drug interactions?” and “Is there a trajectory underlying human history?” to name a few.
Pablo Marquet elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences
SFI External Professor Pablo Marquet has been elected as an International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
New study improves 'crowd wisdom' estimates
In a new study, researchers examined just how accurate our collective intelligence is and how individual bias and information sharing skew aggregate estimates. Using their findings, they developed a mathematical correction that takes into account bias and social information to generate an improved crowd estimate.
Q&A: From parakeets to people with Elizabeth Hobson
Science writer Katherine Mast chatted with ASU-SFI Fellow Elizabeth Hobson about her upcoming experiments from a grant received by the Army Research Office to conduct social science research.
In memoriam: George Oster
SFI Science Board member George Oster passed away Sunday, April 15, at the age of 77.
Machine learning yields new insights into French Revolution’s early days
New research from an interdisciplinary collaboration among historians, political scientists, and statisticians suggests that rhetorical innovations may have played a significant role in winning acceptance for the new principles of governance that built the French republic’s foundation — and inspired future democracies around the world.
Social learning squared
A workshop, Integrating different perspectives on social learning, meets to share insights from a range of disciplines.
Study: How life generates new forms
A new study by External Professor Andreas Wagner and colleagues identifies the kind of gene regulation most likely to generate evolutionary change.
From Neolithic village to modern city, working group seeks uniform theory of 'social reactors'
The Social Reactors working group meets April 5-6 to quantify the social processes that could govern both modern and ancient cities.
Video: Damon Centola on 'How Behavior Spreads'
Damon Centola presents more than a decade of original research examining how changes in societal behavior ― in voting, health, technology, and finance ― occur and the ways social networks can be used to influence how they propagate. Watch the talk. (1 hour 22 minutes)
Researchers turn to complexity science to improve assessment of scientific value
A workshop at SFI in early April explores questions about scientific value. This event brings together researchers and institutional leaders who will discuss how to measure impact and improve judgment by looking at tools of complexity.
Finding meaning in big data
The noise in high-dimensional datasets can obscure real correlations — and give rise to illusory patterns that don’t mean anything. April 2-5, an interdisciplinary group of mathematicians, physicists, and theoretical computer scientists meets at SFI to address the problem and devise new algorithms that can succeed all the way up to the limits that arise from not having enough data, or not knowing if the data is accurate.
Study: To prevent collapse of tropical forests, protect their shape
A team of scientists has made a fundamental discovery about how fires on the edges of these forests control their shape and stability. Their study implies that when patches of tropical forest lose their natural shape it could contribute to the sudden, even catastrophic, transformation of that land from trees to grass.
Complexity postdocs reconvene
The Santa Fe Institute and James S. McDonnell Foundation (JSMF) are reconvening their postdoctoral fellows for the third bi-annual Postdocs in Complexity Conference on March 27-30 in Santa Fe.