Professional Development

Exploring Complexity from a SFI Perspective

May 23 - 25, 2011

University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, New Mexico

"Science has explored the microcosmos and the macrocosmos; we have a good sense of the lay of the land. The great unexplored frontier is complexity."

Heinz Pagels, The Dreams of Reason

This two-and-a-half day course is an intensive, immersive tour of the sciences of complexity, a broad set of efforts 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 for professionals, faculty, students and others who are curious to explore and apply this new interdisciplinary scientific approach. 

The 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 agent-based computer modeling, as well as the application of these areas to understanding complexity in biological, economic, social and technological systems.    read more...

Origin of Life: From Geochemistry to the Genetic Code

June 21 - July 3, 2011
George Mason University
Fairfax, Virginia

SFI uses a unique, highly successful teacher professional development template featuring direct collaboration between SFI senior scientists and middle and secondary school teachers in communities local to our research project sites. Teachers are trained in new pedagogical methods to inspire a curriculum based on inquiry and research rather than fact memorization.

Even today’s most inspiring educators have difficulty developing broad enthusiasm for the study of science. SFI’s approach to science with its focus on relevant, active, project-based learning helps to bridge previously disparate sets of fields and explores the underlying principals on which compartmentalized science education has been predicated.   read more...

Previous Programs:

Demystifying Complex Systems by Thinking about Networks - Workshop 2010

Download Brochure (141.9 KB)

Emergence of Life Workshop 2009