News + Events

Though scientists have yet to find life beyond our own planet, the universe is rife with possibilities. Where to look, and how to recognize it when we find it, are questions physical biologist Chris Kempes explored during March 20 Santa Fe Institute Community Lecture. Watch his talk here.

Patents are one of the best sources of data on technology development — an open-ended, historical and adaptive system that shows us how and why inventions have come to be. But is the U.S. patent system broken?

Calling all former SFI postdoctoral fellows, REUs, Summer School students, and faculty! We’re hosting a reunion, and we hope you can come. Register here.

Physicist Sidney Redner presents an SFI Community Lecture on the role of randomness in our daily lives. Watch his talk here.

November 3-4, SFI scientists gathered with members of the Applied Complexity Network to explore the complexities of natural and artificial intelligence.

The first annual InterPlanetary Festival will draw space enthusiasts from around the world for a two-day celebration of human ingenuity June 7-8, 2018, in Santa Fe, NM.

Exploring the limits of scientific understanding is the query that will drive a three-day workshop at SFI, which itself aims to understand how well scientific and mathematical reasoning can comprehend complex systems.

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.

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.

The Santa Fe Institute invites space enthusiasts of all ages and backgrounds to engage with the pressing problems of today by imagining the challenges of tomorrow in a series of city-wide events from October 13 through October 17.

In a two-part lecture series in Santa Fe on September 25-26, economist John Geanakoplos explored why it is that out of all economic variables, debt causes the most trouble. Watch part one of his talk here and part two here.

The body includes the brain — so what role does it play in intelligence? An SFI working group meets to explore morphological computation and a theory of embodied intelligence.

On September 12, 2017, SFI and Thornburg Investment Management co-hosted a panel discussion to explore the possibilities for advancing our understanding of economics through the ideas and tools of complexity science. Watch the talk here.

Distinguished Professor Geoffrey West presented the origin of scaling laws and their compelling implications for explaining everything from the lifecycles of companies, to a grand unified theory of sustainability on August 29, 2017.  Watch his talk here.  

Colleagues, friends, and family gather to remember the life and work of Harold Morowitz, and to keep moving his ideas forward. 

SFI Maya Working Group meets for fifth time to produce a second book.

A June working group explored ways to model interactions between organisms and a public good, where both can diffuse in space.

Farley Ziegler, Tim Jenison, and SFI Professor Jessica Flack presented an SFI Community Lecture on painting and optics in the 17th Century and a screening of Tim's Vermeer at The Lensic Performing Arts Center on August 1.

The Santa Fe Institute is launching an InterPlanetary Project — the first project of its kind to combine celebration with experimentation, and conversation with analysis.