News + Events

SFI researchers quantify the thermodynamic efficiency of a fundamental biological computation. 

Research by several SFI faculty appears in a special issue of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Series A, dedicated to the fundamental question of how complex life originated. 

SFI's inaugural Complexity Challenge asked participants in SFI's education programs to apply their studies to an abstracted, real-world problem. Read more about the challenge and the winning solutions.

A study published this week in the journal Nature charts inequality across millennia, with profound implications for contemporary society.

The Santa Fe Institute’s Board of Trustees has welcomed William Gurley of Benchmark Capital and James Pallotta of Raptor Group.

Nick Lane presented a lecture on energy and Matter at the Origin of Life at The Lensic Performing Arts Center on November 7. Watch his talk here.

In a new paper in Nature Communications, three SFI-affiliated researchers describe a trio of paradoxical dynamics that can arise in simple microbial economies. The paper looks at just one type of scenario: a self-sufficiency model where two types of microbes are producing goods that are valuable to both themselves and others. 

A group of ecologists, anthropologists, and archaeologists studying pre- and non-industrial human communities in places around the world are working to compile, analyze, and model data about many types of interactions to see how they vary or stay the same across cultures, ecologies, and environments over time.

External Professor Dan Rockmore, director of the Neukom Institute for Computational Science at Dartmouth College, recently announced three new literary awards for speculative fiction. The deadline for submissions is December 31, 2017.

Noli Timere is a forthcoming graphic novel based on recent scientific insights into the human microbiome and beneficial epidemics.

Organisms competing for contested resources like nutrients, light, and space play an important role in biodiversity shown in a recent paper co-authored by incoming SFI Omidyar Fellow Jacopo Grilli whose model offers a better understanding than that provided by previous models of how diverse communities are maintained in nature.

SFI’s Applied Complexity Network (ACtioN) is offering The Studio which is a multi-day intensive workshop wherein a group of a firm’s decision-makers convene at SFI and meet with SFI scientists to work through aspects of complexity theory that apply to their organization’s specific challenges.

The Santa Fe Institute has welcomed seven new external faculty for 2017.

The extent to which age, gender, geographic location, and education level determine how people think about democracy is the subject of a recent study by SFI External Professor Paula Sabloff and colleagues.

A theorem published this week in the American Economic Journal: Microeconomics suggests that greater engagement in the international exchange can actually reinforce productivity-impeding practices that keep countries in poverty.

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B features SFI research in its latest themed issue on innovations

What do you lose by moving to the suburbs? A lot, according to an SFI working group examining human settlements over thousands of years.

On Tuesday, October 17, Manfred Laubichler led a panel discussion on the unprecedented ways in which human activity has shaped the planet. Watch the panel discussion here.

A group of ecologists, anthropologists, and archaeologists studying pre and non-industrial human communities in places around the world are working to compile, analyze, and model data about these many types of interactions to see how they vary or stay the same across cultures, ecologies, and environments over time.

The newly-established SFI Press is pleased to announce the publication of its first volume, History, Big History, & Metahistory.