In October, the International Society for Artificial Life recognized several SFI researchers and co-authors with the ISAL Award for Outstanding Publication of 2024. The award celebrates the paper “Fundamental constraints to the logic of living systems,” which was published in Interface Focus last fall. The paper analyzed case studies from thermodynamics, computation, genetics, cellular development, brain science, ecology, and evolution, to conclude that certain fundamental limits prevent some forms of life from ever existing.
SFI External Professor Ricard Solé (ICREA-Universitat Pompeu Fabra), lead author on the study, says, “This is great news for me for two reasons. First, it recognizes a successful collaborative effort among complexity scientists I deeply admire, presenting an important roadmap for future research at the crossroads of disciplines. Second, on a personal note, my entire career has been devoted to the search for general laws underlying the evolution of complexity, so this feels like a meaningful recognition of a vision I’m proud to share with my SFI colleagues.”
SFI Professor Chris Kempes accepted the award on behalf of the research team during the 2025 Conference on Artificial Life, held in Kyoto, Japan. “This award comes from a massively multidisciplinary community, working on some of the hardest problems facing modern science and doing so with a radically frontier perspective,” says Kempes. “It is an honor for our work to be singled out by such a community.”
SFI Professor David Wolpert, SFI External Professors Eric Smith, Serguei Saavedra, and Michael Lachmann, former SFI Postdoctoral Fellows Eric Libby and Artemy Kolchinsky, and co-authors Bernat Corominas-Murtra and Manlio De Domenico contributed to the research.
Read the paper “Fundamental constraints to the logic of living systems” in Interface Focus (October 25, 2024). DOI:10.1098/rsfs.2024.0010