Santa Fe Institute

SFI Resident Professor Sam Bowles has co-authored a new book of problem sets and solutions based on the new microeconomics, with applications to inequality, climate change, and other pressing issues in today’s world. Available now.

SFI welcomes Program Postdoctoral Fellow Shuhao Fu. Artificial-intelligence systems have made remarkable progress in recent years, but they still struggle with the kind of flexible, relational reasoning that comes naturally to humans. Fu studies how to bridge that gap. With a…

What if one model could realistically predict the economy of an entire country? The entire world? A month-long working group, co-organized by SFI External Professor Doyne Farmer, made the case that agent-based models may bring this vision to life:  santafe.edu/news-center/ne…

SFI welcomes Complexity Postdoctoral Fellow Maike Morrison. @MaikeMorrison develops mathematical tools to quantify and compare biological variation — from species in ecosystems, to microbes in the gut, to ancestral lineages in humans. Her work draws on ecology, population…

Congratulations to SFI Professor Melanie Mitchell (@MelMitchell1), a winner of the 2025 National Academies Eric and Wendy Schmidt Awards for Excellence in Science Communications (@SciCommAwards). Mitchell is recognized for her writing and podcasting on topics related to AI and…

Do people always act in their best interest? A new working group meeting examines how context influences people's decisions—and how seemingly irrational choices can be rational in certain contexts.  These insights could help policymakers design societal interventions that enable…

Catch up on our most recent Community Lecture: “Transmission Versus Truth: What Will It Take to Make an AI as Smart as a 4-Year-Old?” with Alison Gopnik.  This was the last of six community lectures for 2025, and all are available to watch on SFI’s YouTube channel. Watch here:…

Tomorrow: the final event in SFI’s 2025 Community Lecture Series! Join us for Alison Gopnik's lecture, “Transmission Versus Truth: What Will It Take to Make an AI as Smart as a 4-Year-Old?” —  7:30 pm at  The Lensic Performing Arts Center. Gopnik explores how childhood,…

In this SFI Seminar, biographer Alec Nevala-Lee explores the life of physicist and Nobel laureate Luis W. Alvarez, whose work spanned the Manhattan Project, investigating the JFK assassination, and developing the asteroid theory of dinosaur extinction.  His book “Collisions:…

SFI's Postdocs in Complexity Global Conference brings together interdisciplinary early-career researchers from around the world. This year’s conference, held September 16–19, drew 53 accomplished scholars for a four-day meeting focused on collaboration, networking, and…

Global markets are complex systems, shaped by feedback loops, shocks, and adaptive behavior that rarely follow textbook rules. That reality is at the center of a special issue on complexity economics in the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, which includes several…

Stochastic modeling provides new approaches to tackle pressing medical problems. In this SFI Seminar, Sean Lawley (University of Utah) illustrates this with two examples: applying ovarian tissue cryopreservation to delay menopause, and analyzing how missed medication doses affect…

Wind energy production is inherently variable due to the turbulent nature of atmospheric winds, posing challenges for grid stability and integration. Understanding the statistical properties of wind power fluctuations is essential for improving renewable energy reliability. In…

Complexity science can help archaeologists understand how the everyday actions of ancient people accumulated into the large-scale patterns we excavate today. In her new book, Thinking Through Archaeological Complexity, SFI External Professor Stefani Crabtree (Utah State…

In this SFI Seminar, Scott Aaronson (University of Texas at Austin) explores the limits of mathematical knowability — from Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem and Turing’s uncomputability to the astonishing growth of the Busy Beaver function and the future possibilities of quantum…

Launched in 2022 by SFI donor Hank Schuyler, the Lou Schuyler Seed Grant Fund supports boundary-breaking research by SFI’s postdoctoral fellows.  Honoring the late Lou Schuyler, the fund encourages bold, exploratory projects that bridge disciplines and spark new ideas. From…

Reserve your free tickets to SFI’s next Community Lecture with renowned developmental psychologist Alison Gopnik, “Transmission Versus Truth: What Will It Take to Make an AI as Smart as a 4-Year-Old?” — October 21 at @TheLensic  Gopnik argues there is no single “general…

Every society must balance the costs of invention with the benefits of innovation. In a new paper in Science Advances, SFI External Professor Marcus Hamilton and colleagues present a new model showing the tradeoffs between the cost and utility of new tools in small-scale…

SFI welcomes Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow Jacob Calvert.  A mathematician and data scientist, Calvert studies how collective behaviors emerge and recur across physical and biological systems. “I’m interested in simple, direct questions about nature that are difficult to answer…

Darwin imagined that life may have begun in a “warm little pond.” Leftover particles from the evolution of stars formed an interstellar stew, capable of being zapped into animation.  In the lab of SFI External Professor Juan Pérez-Mercader (Harvard University), researchers put…