Sahana Subramanyam was a participant in SFI's 2018 summer Research Experience for Undergraduates — now called the Undergraduate Complexity Research program. In this essay, she reflects on how the ...

Convening a global cohort of curious, driven, generous, and brilliant people from across a vast range of expertise and career stages sets the possibility space for SFI’s Complex Systems Summer School, ...

Scott Page Professor of Complexity at the University of Michigan; Science Board Member + External Professor at SFI ...

Processual archaeologists began employing some of the vocabulary now current in complexity studies in the 1960s and 1970s, inspired by cybernetics, general systems theory, and contemporary ...

This working group brings together scholars from diverse fields—neuroscience, psychology, philosophy, and AI—who are all investigating the broad notion of “intelligence”, whether in biological systems ...

SFI Resident Professor Melanie Mitchell has received a 2025 Eric and Wendy Schmidt Award for Excellence in Science Communications from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Across biology — from microbial communities to cancer tumors to ancient human populations — researchers measure diversity in ways that shape how we understand life. But those measurements are often ...

Most people are aware of smoking's harmful health effects, yet many choose to light up regularly. If viewed from the lens of rational choice theory — an economic framework that suggests people always ...

In the 1980s and ’90s, SFI played laboratory to a promising new method known as agent-based modeling. Instead of relying on averages and unrealistic mathematical assumptions, these models were built ...

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. Program ...

We ask all applicants to read all of the UCR info pages carefully before applying or emailing us with questions. Thank you. SFI’s UCR program is designed for curious, motivated students who can work ...

It has become increasingly vital for students across the sciences to gain computational and mathematical skills: the ability to translate real-world systems into quantitative models, carry out ...