Santa Fe Institute

SFI’s REU program provides an opportunity for young scientists from many disciplines to explore what a social science perspective brings to other fields and how traditionally quantitative disciplines can contribute to the social sciences. Each REU participant works with one or more SFI faculty mentors on a specific, mutually selected projects focusing on the computational properties of complex systems with particular, but not exclusive, emphasis on the social sciences.

The Complex Systems Summer School offers an intensive four week introduction to complex behavior in mathematical, physical, living, and social systems for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows in the sciences and social sciences. The school is for participants who seek background and hands-on experience to help them prepare to conduct interdisciplinary research in areas related to complex systems.

The program consists of an intensive series of lectures, laboratories, and discussion sessions focusing on foundational ideas, tools, and current topics in complex systems research. These include nonlinear dynamics and pattern formation, scaling theory, information theory and computation theory, adaptation and evolution, network structure and dynamics, adaptive computation techniques, computer modeling tools and specific applications of these core topics to various disciplines. In addition, participants will formulate and carry out team projects related to topics covered in the program.

The Santa Fe Institute is pleased to announce the 18th annual Graduate Workshop in Computational Social Science Modeling and Complexity. The workshop will bring together a group of advanced graduate students and a small faculty for an intensive two week study of computational social science modeling and complexity. The workshop will consist of lectures by faculty, special topic seminars by members of the Santa Fe Institute, and presentations of work in progress by graduate student participants. The primary goal of the summer workshop is to assist graduate students pursuing research agendas which includes a computational modeling component. A significant portion of the workshop will be devoted to analyzing and improving research being conducted by the graduate student participants.

Offered at George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia

For 26 years, the Santa Fe Institute has challenged and equipped the next generation’s brightest scholars to take on complex problems through schools, fellowships, and youth educational curricula serving students and educators of all ages and backgrounds. SFI Complexity Scholarship programs include instruction by, and interaction with, SFI scientists. Complexity scholars trained at the Santa Fe Institute are working to understand the theoretical foundations and patterns underlying the systems most critical to our future -- economies, ecosystems, conflict, disease, human social institutions, and the global condition.

For 2012 we are pleased to announce a novel immersion program for a select number of high school students from around the world, the Complexity and Modeling Program. Offered from July 8 to 21, 2012 at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, the Summer CAMP builds on a highly successful SFI program previously available only to local Santa Fe students; residential options at George Mason enable us to reach students throughout the United States.

This intensive two-week residential science Summer CAMP introduces participants to complexity science scholarship. Through individual projects, computer simulation activities, analysis of ecological data, lectures and seminars, along with related weekend activities, students conduct research in this cutting edge field. Days are made up of instruction, small working group sessions, and research time interleaved with sports and extra-curricular events.

The Summer CAMP broadens students’ scientific horizons, and accelerates both academic and personal development by immersing them in a supportive community of scholars, teaching them how to create and analyze computer models, and introducing them to the challenges and rewards of independent scientific research. The academic program is demanding: lectures and curricula in complexity science, collection and analysis of ecological data, mathematics, and computer programming are taught at the college level. Each student will receive a high-level of personal attention from program instructors. At the conclusion of the CAMP, students will present their work and, if appropriate, develop a plan for continuation throughout the school year.

More information about the Complexity and Modeling Program can be found on our wiki, facebook page, and the 2011 CAMP blog.

This two-and-a-half day course is an intensive tour of the sciences of complexity, a broad set of effort that seek to explain how large-scale complex, organized, and adaptive behavior can emerge from simple interactions among myriad individuals. This course, sponsored by the Santa Fe Institute, is specifically designed fro professionals, faculty, students and others who are curious to explore and apply this new transdisciplinary scientific approach.

This course will be taught by a group of Santa Fe Institute faculty and associates. The program has no prerequisites and requires no specific background in mathematics or science. Participants will be guided, via lectures and hands-on demonstrations, through major topics of complex systems science, including dynamics and chaos, networks, evolution and agent0based computer modeling, as well as the application of these areas to understanding complexity in biological, economic, social and technological systems. The course is aimed at participants who are interested in these topics but do not necessarily have any technical background. Examples of people who will particularly benefit from this course are managers and policy-makers in business, government, and non-profit organizations; industrial research and development staff; medical, social work, and education professionals; journalists; and university faculty and students in any area of science or social science.

More information about the course can be found on our wiki page.