Complexity Explorer Santa Fe Institute

Jennifer Dunne is the Vice President for Science at the Santa Fe Institute, where she has been on the faculty since 2007. Her research uses cross-system analysis and computational modeling to identify fundamental patterns and principles of ecological network structure and dynamics at multiple spatial and temporal scales. She uses this framework to explore the coexistence of species and ecological robustness, persistence, and stability, with a current ‘deep time’ focus on archaeoecological and paleobiological systems. Dunne was named a Fellow of the Ecological Society of America in 2017 and the Network Science Society in 2020.

Sonia Kéfi, SFI External Professor, is a research director at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and based at the Institut des Sciences de l’Evolution de Montpellier (ISEM), France. She is an ecologist interested in ecosystem complexity and how the architecture of ecological systems drives emergent properties such as stability and resilience. She combines theoretical models and data analysis from various ecosystems to address these questions. She was awarded the Martinus van Marum prize in 2011 and the Bronze Medal of the CNRS in 2017.

Chris Kempes is a professor at the Santa Fe Institute. Chris's work focuses on developing general perspectives of life that can be applied in contexts ranging from modern ecology, to astrobiology, to human institutions. Mathematical and physical theories lie at the heart of his methodologies to predict how evolution has shaped biological architecture and how this, in turn, forms a foundation for reliable predictions of environmental response and interaction. His work spans the scales of genetic information architecture to the morphology of microbial individuals and communities to the regional variation of plant traits and their feedback with climate and available resources.

Guim Aguadé-Gorgorió, Teaching Fellow

Guim is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellow at the Institut des Sciences de l'Évolution in Montpellier (ISEM). Guim is a physicist studying complex adaptive systems, with a particular interest in understanding what makes biological systems of many interacting elements, such as cancers and ecosystems, resilient or fragile to external change.

Andrew Stier, Teaching Fellow

Andrew is a postdoctoral fellow at the Santa Fe Institute. He holds a PhD in Integrative Neuroscience from the University of Chicago, a Masters in Psychology and a BA in Mathematics and Physics from the University of Chicago. Stier’s research in Urban Psychology has focused on applying and extending the models of Urban Scaling Theory to understand diverse aspects of human psychology, including, psychological depression, implicit racial biases, and short-term attention.

Suzanne Kern, Director of Education

Suzanne will oversee curriculum and assist with daily operations at the GAINs ecosystems summer school. Her research has focused on characterizing unusual metabolic and signaling pathways in bacteria, involving chemical, cellular, population, and ecosystem levels of analysis. Her experience in pedagogy, teaching, and administration spans two decades and a variety of institutions.

Carla Shedivy, Program Manager, Education

Carla will oversee day-to-day operations of the GAINs ecosystems summer school, assisting faculty and students in Sète, France. Carla works for the Santa Fe Institute managing their education programming and a variety of activities. 

Stefani Crabtree • Utah State University (US)• Santa Fe Institute

Stefani Crabtree, SFI External Professor, is Assistant Professor of Social-Environmental Modeling in the Department of Environment and Society of the Quinney College of Natural Resources at Utah State University. Her research applies complex systems science modeling methodologies (such as agent-based modeling and network science) to problems in social science and ecology.

Andy Dobson • Princeton University (US) • Santa Fe Institute

Andy Dobson is a Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University and External Faculty at SFI, and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. His research focuses on the role that wildlife diseases play in the ecology and conservation of large wilderness ecosystems.

Zoe Finkel • Dalhousie University (Canada)

Zoe Finkel is a Canada research chair in marine microbial macroecology and co-director of the Marine Macroecology and Biogeochemistry Lab at Dalhousie University. Her research is focused on finding and using physiological, ecological and evolutionary rules to understand and anticipate the interactions between marine organisms, especially plankton, on biogeochemistry and climate.

Michael E. Hochberg • University of Montpellier (France) • Santa Fe Institute

Michael Hochberg, SFI External Professor, is Distinguished Research Director with the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and based at the University of Montpellier, France. He uses mathematical models and experiments to unravel complex ecological interactions with a strong focus on how environments influence diseases, particularly those associated with bacteria and viruses, and cancers.

Michel Loreau • Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (France)

Michel Loreau, is an emeritus researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (Moulis, France), an associate professor at Peking University (Beijing, China), a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, a member of the Academia Europaea and an honorary member of the British Ecological Society. Over the past twenty years, his research has mainly focused on the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, and on the ecological and societal consequences of biodiversity loss. He recently published the book "Nature That Makes Us Human."

Mary I. O'Connor • University of British Columbia (Canada) • Santa Fe Institute

Mary O'Connor, SFI External Professor, is a Professor in the Zoology Department and Director of the Biodiversity Research Centre at the University of British Columbia. O'Connor’s research focuses on biodiversity change, ecological and evolutionary effects of temperature, and the role of information in ecology.

Serguei Saavedra • Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US) • Santa Fe Institute

Serguei Saavedra, SFI External Professor, is Associate Professor at MIT in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and head of the Systems Ecology Group at MIT. Serguei is a theoretical ecologist and his work has centered on understanding the feasibility of ecological communities under changing environments using formal procedures of complex systems thinking, synthesis, and mathematical modeling.

Marten Scheffer • Wageningen University (Netherlands) • Santa Fe Institute

Marten Scheffer, SFI External Professor, is a professor at Wageningen University, a member of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences, and a foreign associate of the National Academy of Sciences in the US. Scheffer is interested in unravelling the mechanisms that determine the stability and resilience of complex systems.

Ricard Solé • Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Spain) • Santa Fe Institute (US)

Ricard Solé, SFI External Professor, is head of the Complex Systems Lab at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra and is also a member of the Council of the European Complex Systems Society. One of his main research interests is understanding the possible presence of universal patterns of organization in complex systems, from prebiotic replicators to evolved artificial objects.