News + Events

SFI External Professor John Geanakoplos of Yale University and Ana Fostel of the University of Virginia were awarded the eighth Stephen A. Ross Prize by The Foundation for Advancement of Research in Financial Economics (FARFE) for their 2008 paper "Leverage Cycles and the Anxious Economy." The paper presents a groundbreaking analysis of financial booms and busts. 

The Postdocs in Complexity Conference, launched in 2017 by SFI and the James S. McDonnell Foundation, provides a unique platform for early-career complexity researchers to collaborate, share insights, and build meaningful research networks. The conference has been instrumental in fostering interdisciplinary interactions among postdocs.

Researchers, including former SFI Postdoctoral Fellow Elizabeth Hobson, have introduced a novel mate choice concept called 'Inferred Attractiveness,' outlined in a recent publication in PLOS Biology. 

SFI Professor Melanie Mitchell has been awarded the 2023 Senior Scientific Award by the Complex Systems Society for her exceptional contributions to various fields, including artificial intelligence and complexity science, as well as her efforts in educating a broad audience about complex systems. Mitchell's extensive work, including the creation of Complexity Explorer, has significantly impacted the understanding and promotion of complexity science and AI research.

While researchers are on the cusp of creating computer models for entire organs, precision healthcare applications using digital twins are still theoretical. Karen Willcox, an SFI External Professor and University of Texas aerospace engineer, is helping to convene a National Science Foundation-sponsored workshop at SFI, October 12–13, to make this new type of modeling technology a reality.

An international team of researchers has developed a new theoretical framework that bridges physics and biology to provide a unified approach for understanding how complexity and evolution emerge in nature. This new work on "Assembly Theory," published in Nature, represents a major advance in our fundamental comprehension of biological evolution and how it is governed by the physical laws of the universe.    

Venki Ramakrishnan, who won a Nobel prize in 2009 for his work uncovering the structure of the ribosome, joins SFI as Fractal Faculty. 

As children, we learn categories through visual examples, verbal explanations, or both, and are often guided by “teachers” — perhaps a parent or other adult. In contrast, academic research has primarily studied non-pedagogical learning where there is no active teacher, and learning based on visual examples, omitting verbal-based category learning. A recent paper in Cognition by Arseny Moskvichev and co-authors aims to close this gap.

How much do city environments constrain human behavior? What aspects of a city’s organization affect the psychology and mental health of its inhabitants? Scientific theories anchored in psychology that explain how city spaces shape human behavior are sparse. Omidyar Postdoctoral Fellow Andrew Stier works at the intersection of psychology and urban science to build theoretical models that examine how individuals and large groups adapt to and design city spaces.

That strong urge many people feel to abide by social norms even when it is individually harmful may have its roots in Darwinian fitness, according to a new study in Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology. The research uses agent-based modeling to provide an evolutionary mechanism that helps explain what keeps people cooperating even when no one is looking.

The study of mathematical models can provide insight into the structure and function of complex systems. However, even simple models can often be quite difficult to analyze, and meaningfully connecting models to real-world data is more challenging still. Omidyar Postdoctoral Fellow Harrison Hartle’s research expertise is in mathematical and computational modeling. He is interested in advancing the study of generative models for complex systems with the goal of constructing practically applicable and meaningfully interpretable models for real-world data. 

A September 27–29 workshop, the Complex Time General Conference on Immortality, meets to explore general patterns for lifespan across scales, from organisms, the mind, and behavior, to civilizations and star systems. The organizers hope to challenge preconceptions about immortality and, eventually, develop a general theory of longevity. 

In the last two decades, researchers have reported success modeling high-dimensional chaotic behaviors with a simple but powerful machine-learning approach called reservoir computing. A new paper in Physical Review Research identifies limitations to reservoir computing and suggests a kind of catch-22 that can prove hard to circumvent, especially for complicated dynamic systems. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has committed more than $250 million to become better prepared for disease outbreaks like COVID-19 — and they’re turning to two SFI researchers, Sam Scarpino of Northeastern University and Lauren Ancel Meyers of the University of Texas at Austin (UT), to help make it happen.

The field of artificial intelligence has long been stymied by the lack of an answer to its most fundamental question: What is intelligence? To address questions about intelligence in AI, we need concrete tasks to pin down and test the notion of intelligence, argue SFI researchers Arseny Moskvichev, Melanie Mitchell, and Victor Vikram Odouard in a new paper in Transactions on Machine Learning Research.

In a complex system, small, local changes can create a cascade of unexpected consequences in other parts of the system. Choices that seem immediately prudent might prove less ideal in the long term. Applied Complexity Fellow Saverio Perri is interested in the unexpected ways that sustainability transitions might impact both social and ecological systems. 

New research uncovers a link between aging and circadian rhythms in mammals. Researchers from SFI and Northwestern team up to create a mathematical model that can describe the hierarchical nature of the circadian system.  

Incoming Omidyar Fellow Katrin Schmelz grew up in East Germany, mere kilometers from the border with West Germany. The experience has shaped her research questions into how experiences of state control impact how people respond to other restrictions throughout their lives and how individual behaviors and values coevolve with societal institutions and policies.

The past 20 years have seen rapid changes in our social networks, and our individual behaviors are now maladapted. To respond to these changes as a society, we first need a better understanding of how groups alter their decision-making strategies and beliefs to cope with emerging problems. A September 12–14 workshop, part of SFI’s CounterBalance Series and funded by Siegel Family Foundation, is convening scientists from a range of biological, social, and physical sciences, and senior representatives from civic organizations and the tech industry, to discuss the challenges and potential directions forward. 

Hoping to finish the most comprehensive spatial database on medieval and modern Germany, Complexity Postdoctoral Fellow Kerice Doten-Snitker enters SFI intending to weave complexity science into her research. Doten-Snitker’s research explores how the formation of states and institutions pave the way for social constructs of race and ethnicity to emerge. She completed her Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Washington.