New Leadership for New Science
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Omidyar Fellow, 2010-2013
Rogier Braakman has long been interested in big-picture questions like how did order in the universe – stars and planets, life, us – emerge? But his early academic training in chemistry did not always encourage such thinking. The hybrid field of astrochemistry allowed him, as he puts it, to take a more historical approach to chemistry, and to seek insight into how the world came to be.
A more general study of complex systems was a logical next step for Rogier, and it brought him to SFI. He now uses chemical networks to study how chemistry evolves in, and into, life. He also is interested in how the chemical organization of systems changes as one zooms in from interstellar clouds to biological organisms.
Eventually he hopes to take what he learns at SFI and step back once more: first to use chemical networks for a different perspective on interstellar and interplanetary chemistry, and then to compare chemical systems to other complex systems – perhaps social, economic, or technological ones.
Rogier was a postdoctoral fellow at SFI prior to his Omidyar Fellowship. He holds a Ph.D. in chemical physics from the Caltech, where he specialized in interstellar chemistry. He earned a master’s degree in chemistry from the University of Amsterdam. He attended SFI’s Complex Systems Summer School in Beijing in 2006.
Omidyar Fellow, 2009-2012
Simon DeDeo is fascinated by the universe and how it works. As a child his attention was caught by Stephen Hawking’s best-selling book A Brief History of Time. Later, he experimented with discharge tubes in the basement of his high school. After a letter he wrote to the MIT Physics Department caught the attention of a professor, he spent two summers in Cambridge, MA, where he studied diffuse interstellar gas using a rooftop radio dish.
Simon now holds a master’s in applied mathematics and theoretical physics from Cambridge University, an A.B. in astrophysics from Harvard, and a Ph.D. in astrophysical sciences from Princeton. His recent past includes post doctoral fellowships at the Institute for Physics and Mathematics of the Universe at the University of Tokyo and at the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago.
As an Omidyar Fellow at SFI, Simon takes advantage of the transdisciplinary environment to extend to biology his research in mathematics and theoretical physics. His research investigates the emergence of collective phenomena in biological systems that allow groups to solve problems better than any of their individual parts. At SFI he combines methods developed to study, on the one hand, "unintelligent" physical phenomena, and on the other hand, engineered systems, in collaboration with researchers examining the development and evolution of animal behavior.
Omidyar Fellow, 2012-2015
“For as long as I can remember, I’ve been fascinated by everything,” says Evandro Ferrada. This lack of focus was something of a problem. No single field provided him with anything close to what he felt would be a satisfying way to explore the universe.
He went through a period of disquiet, seeking the wisdom of scholars, but the epiphany he hoped for never came. Finally, Evandro faced the deadline his university had set for declaring a field of undergraduate study. He chose biochemistry – “just a nice combination of some of the things I liked,” he says.
From time to time Evandro wondered how life might have been different had he chosen poetry. Or mathematics. Then an astounding thing happened while studying the evolutionary biology. He realized it didn’t matter which discipline he had chosen. “The artistic and scientific frameworks are the same,” he says. “They’re just different ways of looking at the world.” He is convinced that there are patterns of change common to seemingly disparate systems.
He aims to contribute to a unified theory of evolutionary biology, beginning his work at SFI by examining genotype-phenotype maps of macromolecular systems. Eventually he hopes to unravel some of the connections between science and art.
Evandro holds a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from the University of Zurich and a professional title in biochemistry from the Universidad Católica de Chile. He attended SFI’s Complex Systems Summer School in Argentina in 2008.
Omidyar Fellow, 2010-2013
Laura Fortunato is interested in how evolution has shaped human family systems and how these, in turn, have shaped human social behavior. Her work combines anthropological theory and data with theoretical and statistical methods used in the study of non-human social systems. It also draws heavily on the archaeological, historical, and linguistic evidence documenting the development of human social organization.
In a series of recent studies she has looked at the origins and evolution of monogamous marriage – the norm in only 17 percent of human societies. In one study, she developed a theoretical framework to investigate the evolutionary payoffs of different marriage and inheritance strategies. Next, she used phylogenetic methods to test the prediction of an "early" historical origin of monogamous marriage generated by this theoretical framework.
Laura holds a laurea in biological sciences from the University of Padova, Italy, and a master's degree and Ph.D. in anthropology from University College London. She attended SFI's Complex Systems Summer School in Beijing in 2006.
Omidyar Fellow, 2011-2014
While Anne Kandler’s enjoyment of detailed, theoretical mathematics did not wane as she got closer to completing her Ph.D., she felt a desire to apply what she had learned to everyday life. Like many scientists, she wanted to use her craft to usefully explain something about the world.
She took up a position in cultural evolution and developed a fascination with languages, their diversity, and their fates in societies where multiple languages coexist.
Languages are becoming extinct at an alarming rate. In some instances, the demise of a language means the loss of a culture. Anne created a computational model of language shift, which she has tested on the Gaelic language in Scotland. She hopes to characterize the principles underlying how language use declines in a population, and identify the most crucial social policies governments might adopt to save an endangered language. To be successful in her line of research, she says, a transdisciplinary approach like SFI's is vital.
Anne holds a master’s and a Ph.D. in applied mathematics from the Chemnitz University of Technology in Germany. Her Omidyar Fellowship at SFI follows a postdoctoral fellowship in cultural evolution at University College London.
Omidyar Fellow, 2010-2013
Scientific laws do not always apply to the real world exactly as we expect them to. James O’Dwyer finds himself drawn to these instances, intrigued by what he calls their elements of surprise. When theory provides a situation that goes beyond – or even against – our intuition, he says, the contradiction provides the means to refine previously held ideas.
James is exploring theoretical ecology, incorporating elements of math, physics, and biology to better understand the interactions of living things in their common environments. In part he is investigating universality, seeking cases when ecological theories hold across seemingly different systems. From this research, he believes, patterns might be discovered that shed light on practical issues such as the loss of biodiversity, or climate change.
He has found that transdisiplinary approaches do not always meet with clear understanding among the wider scientific community. When he gave his first talk at SFI, however, he felt that everyone in the room "got it."
His appointment as an SFI Omidyar Fellow was preceded by a postdoctoral fellowship in ecology at the University of Oregon. He holds a master’s degree in mathematics and a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Cambridge University as well as a master’s in physics from Durham University.
Omidyar Fellow
I am an anthropologist by training who has several related interests. One is the analysis and modeling of coupled natural and human systems over long periods, especially in the U.S. Southwest. Another is historical anthropology, or the integration of historical linguistics, human biology, archaeology, and oral tradition to better-understand the histories of non-literate societies. I am also interested in applications of concepts and methods from cognitive linguistics in historical linguistics and archaeology. Finally, I am interested in the role of political processes in the evolution of human diversity; especially the ways discourse and power interact with material conditions and individual rationality to promote or discourage social transformation.
Omidyar Fellow, 2011-2014
Charles Perreault always has studied humans; he decided to become an archaeologist at the age of six. Years later, his world travels emphasized to him just how unique we humans are. Unlike many other animal species, “humans are basically everywhere…from the Sahara to the Arctic,” he says, and the variations in human behaviors – from food acquisition to family structures – are far greater than the variations in the behaviors of other animals.
Most social scientists attempt to explain the specialness of the human species through concepts and theories applicable only to humankind. Charles, on the other hand, is trying to explain “human-ness” by using theories that apply across species. In his doctoral work at UCLA, for example, he used classical paleontological concepts to examine human cultural evolution.
At times, he felt his research philosophy distanced him from his peers in archaeology. SFI provided him with the opportunity to collaborate with like-minded colleagues from many disciplines, he says, and to incorporate methods and ideas into his work that “are not typically available in the standard social science environment.”
While at SFI he will pursue a deeper understanding of cultural evolution through the use of theoretical models and cross-cultural comparisons. As part of this work, he will compare the changes brought by evolutionary forces on both cultural and biological phenomenon.
Charles holds a Ph.D. in anthropology from UCLA and a master’s in anthropology from the Université de Montréal.
Omidyar Fellow, 2009-2012
Mathematics. Biology. Jeremy Van Cleve found that his undergraduate education treated his two majors as if they were distinct and unrelated. Unsatisfyingly so. It was when he took a senior-level seminar in sexual selection that things started to fall into place. It was the first time that his instruction truly connected the two, that did not view its various parts as separate topics. This merging provided Jeremy with what he was looking for: a way to quantify, measure, and frame the way the living world works.
In his graduate studies he applied a more integrated approach, seeking, among other things, insights into such questions as how organisms adapt to changing environments and how natural selection might impact an organism’s social interactions.
He continues this holistic approach to biology at SFI, with which he is quite familiar; he participated in SFI’s Research Experiences for Undergraduates mentorship and, as a high school student, received an SFI Prize for Scientific Excellence. His current focus is studying how natural selection shapes behavior when organisms live in groups, and applying tools from statistical physics to evolutionary theory.
Jeremy holds a Ph.D. in biological sciences from Stanford University, where he studied evolutionary biology and population genetics. He also spent time as a research assistant at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
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