News + Events

Murray Gell-Mann, a Nobel-laureate who revealed symmetry and order in the world of subatomic particles and leveled his genius at complex mysteries of life and mind, died peacefully May 24, 2019. He was 89 years old.

The 2019 InterPlanetary Festival takes place June 14-16 in Santa Fe, NM. 

Modular — or cliquey — group structure isolates the flow of communication between individuals, which might seem counterproductive to survival. But for some animal groups, more information isn't necessarily better, according to new SFI research published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.

SFI's Sam Bowles, Mercedes Pascual, and Daniel Schrag have been elected as members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 

Across the globe in a variety of societies, royal women found ways to advance the issues they cared about and advocate for the people important to them as detailed in a recent paper published in the Journal of Archaeological Research.

Physicists at the Santa Fe Institute and MIT have shown that Markov processes, widely used to model complex systems, must unfold over a larger space than previously assumed.

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute and the Santa Fe Institute have developed a new model to explain the evolutionary origins of empathy and other related phenomena, such as emotional contagion and contagious yawning. The model suggests that the origin of a broad range of empathetic responses lies in cognitive simulation.

The Santa Fe Institute again has ranked among the world's top science and technology and transdisciplinary think tanks.

One of the first studies to examine how climate is influencing "functional traits" in forest communities on a global scale finds evidence of major changes. 

A new paper published in the journal Entropy shows how tools from information theory, a branch of complexity science, can help decipher ice cores by quickly homing in on portions of the data that require further investigation. 

A study co-authored by SFI Omidyar Fellow Jacopo Grilli sheds new light on a long-standing question about what triggers cell division.

Undergrads, graduate students, and professionals: Apply to spend the summer of 2019 at SFI.

Introduction to the Theory of Complex Systems synthesizes hundreds of disparate findings in complexity and articulates a single, underlying characteristic of complex systems.

October 13-16, graduate students can meet with leading scientists to learn about modeling and evaluating the future of human populations and their environments. Free tuition for accepted students. Apply before July 11, 2018.

SFI External Professor Steen Rasmussen was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2018 ALIFE conference in Tokyo, Japan.

"Algorithmic Information Dynamics: From Networks to Cells," is a new online course that will introduce students to tools that allow them to explore causal relationships in complex datasets. Register online through Complexity Explorer.

March 22-23, complex systems researchers will meet with business executives to discuss when and how diversity improves decision-making.

A teacher, physicist, and all-around “high throughput” individual, SFI External Professor Alfred Hübler passed away Saturday, January 27, at the age of 60.

A recent analysis statistically connected words appearing in the texts of 591 national constitutions lends new support to the notion of the birth of a nation.

This December 4-5, SFI researchers are convening a workshop to discuss how to study figurative brains such as ant colonies, microbe ecosystems, and the immune system.