News + Events

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. 

An opinion piece in Trends in Ecology and Evolution introduces real-world complexity to social dilemmas by accounting for the way individuals modify and adapt to the environments that surround them.

An SFI Working Group meets to explore the big picture on viruses, from infections of single cells to epidemics among populations.

An SFI workshop explores the evolutionary consequences of developmental bias — the tendency of organisms to evolve some phenotypes more readily than others.

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

This November 5-7, a working group brings early-career scientists together at SFI to imagine a collective vision for the future of ecological networks.

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

R&D Magazine has selected former SFI External Professor Bette Korber to receive their prestigious Scientist of the Year Award for 2018, recognizing her innovative approach to developing an HIV vaccine.

An SFI working group explores the parallels between ancient and modern societies’ challenges in managing risk and what lessons might be found there.

Identifying meaningful information is a key challenge to disciplines from biology to artificial intelligence. In a new paper, SFI's Artemy Kolchinsky and David Wolpert propose a broadly applicable, fully formal definition for this kind of semantic information.

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.

A group of ecologists, cultural anthropologists, geoscientists, and archaeologists studying the unique and myriad ways that humans interact with other species across space and time meets for the third time at SFI.

An SFI workshop examines the key impediments to building machines that understand meaning, and how much understanding is necessary for artificially intelligent machines to approach human-level abilities in language, perception, and reasoning.

Two October meetings at SFI aim to dig into some of the trickiest questions about life, both here on Earth, and how we might recognize it elsewhere in the universe.

SFI External Professor Alan Hastings has received an award from the National Science Foundation to support ongoing research into biological synchrony and phase transitions.

A new study suggests that defenses against extreme temperatures give E. coli bacteria an advantage in fending off certain drugs. 

The Maya Working Group meets at SFI to discuss a new theme, “Being Maya,” which will focus on the cultural identity of the lowland Maya civilization.

The bane of the language-learner is a goldmine for linguists, cultural evolutionists, and computer scientists, a group of whom will meet at SFI Aug. 27–28, 2018. Given the messy state of linguistic affairs, they ask, is it possible to quantitatively encode “meaning” independent of any particular language?

It may seem that there isn't much cross-discussion between theoretical and empirical scientists, but a new cross-citation network analysis shows there is more overlap than many believe.