Emergent Engineering - Foundations Working Group

With recent support secured from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Santa Fe Institute will formally embark upon a three-year research theme, “Using Emergent Engineering for Integrating Complex Systems to Achieve an Equitable Society,” herein "Emergent Engineering." Questions at the heart of emergent engineering have long been explored in SFI’s history, but we have the opportunity now to pursue this theme more dedicatedly, and alongside newly identified collaborative partners, with the goal of developing a Theory of Emergent Engineering.

The purpose of this first meeting is to hear about the current projects underway, represented largely by SFI’s resident researchers, since complexity science already takes into consideration the realities of complex adaptive systems in a way that most problem solving approaches or classical engineering paradigms often miss or ignore. A quick survey of resident researchers available to attend this meeting demonstrates a broad spectrum of work in systems such as health, policy, network and belief dynamics, urban scaling, technological innovation and intervention, regulation, architecture, climate, and ecology. In order to steer the research under this grant for the next three years, we want to start locally, hosting a set of formal (20 minute, standard) and informal (10 minute, slide-less) presentations from each invited participant along with ample discussion time so as to identify:

• Key problems and challenges to examine,
• Limits to existing approaches to engineering,
• Potential new research methods, and
• Out-of-network researchers, practitioners, foundations, and institutions who are working in areas germane to this investigation.

We hope to include these newly identified individuals in a larger “summit” style meeting in Spring of 2025 which will serve as the first of three RWJF-funded workshops within this track. We welcome anyone in the SFI community to sit in and participate in the discussion.