REU Site: SFI's Tran-sdisciplinary Research through Computational Modeling in the Social, Biological, and Physical Sciences Program

Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe NM

Investigators

Abstract

Intellectual Merit The Santa Fe Institute (SFI) hosts an REU Site focusing on the computational properties of complex adaptive systems with particular (but not exclusive) emphasis on the social sciences. The program provides a unique and transformative educational and research experience for undergraduates. SFI is a private, independent research institute dedicated to collaborative and transdisciplinary research across the biological, computational, physical, and social sciences. The REU Site focuses on fundamental scientific problems that cross scales and can be addressed by quantitative thinking, mathematical modeling and empirical data analyses. SFI, the home of complexity science, has played a seminal role in the recognition that many of the most challenging, exciting, and profound questions facing science and society (a) lie at the interfaces between traditional disciplines; and (b) raise questions of collective behavior, emergence, and multi-scale organization, all which are characteristic of complex systems. Among such questions are the physical-chemical origins of life; innovation, growth, evolution and robustness of complex adaptive systems, including organisms, ecosystems, and societies; structure and dynamics of networks in nature and society; biologically-inspired and other novel paradigms of computation; relationships between information processing, energy, and dynamics in biology and society; and growth, sustainability, and the fate of human existence. The REU students are fully immersed and engaged participants in this diverse and, for many, unique intellectual environment composed of overlapping, collaborative, interdisciplinary, and multi-generational scientific teams; in this context they team up with one or more mentors at SFI to work on meaningful complexity science research problems to which they can make a significant contribution. Activities include: participation in the Complex Systems Summer School; development of individual research projects; participation in on-going SFI workshops, working groups, symposia and colloquia; participation in the Summer Internship/Mentorship Program, acquiring teaching and mentoring skills; and presentation of research results in peer-reviewed settings. Broader Impacts Alumni of this SFI REU program are expected to proceed to graduate school, and into academic research and teaching professions. The program provides undergraduates with a unique opportunity to conduct scientific research in a collaborative transdisciplinary environment and to communicate that experience back to their home institutions and to carry it into their future careers. The institute and this REU Site administrators use specific and targeted plans to recruit students from traditionally under-served communities. Other dimensions of broader impacts arise as a result of the participation of previous SFI REU Site alumni (supported by institutional funds), as well as the REU students' partial participation in SFI's annual Graduate Workshop on Computational Social Sciences. All REU students are expected to co-author (with their mentors) scholarly publications.