The Complexity of Platforms-Speakers
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David Krakauer
Santa Fe Institute President and William H. Miller Professor of Complex Systems
David’s research focuses on the evolutionary history of information processing mechanisms in biology and culture. This includes genetic, neural, linguistic and cultural mechanisms. The research spans multiple levels of organization, seeking analogous patterns and principles in genetics, cell biology, microbiology and in organismal behavior and society. At the cellular level David has been interested in molecular processes, which rely on volatile, error-prone, asynchronous, mechanisms, which can be used as a basis for decision making and patterning. David also investigates how signaling interactions at higher levels, including microbial and organismal, are used to coordinate complex life cycles and social systems, and under what conditions we observe the emergence of proto-grammars. Much of this work is motivated by the search for 'noisy-design' principles in biology and culture emerging through evolutionary dynamics that span hierarchical structures. Learn more on SFI's website.
Geoffrey West
Santa Fe Institute Distinguished Professor and Past President, Science Board, Science Steering Committee
Geoffrey West is a theoretical physicist whose primary interests have been in fundamental questions in physics, especially those concerning the elementary particles, their interactions and cosmological implications. West served as SFI President from July 2005 through July 2009. Prior to joining the Santa Fe Institute as a Distinguished Professor in 2003, he was the leader, and founder, of the high energy physics group at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he is one of only approximately ten Senior Fellows. Learn more on SFI's website.
John Hagel
Santa Fe Institute Trustee and Leader of the Center for the Edge at Deloitte
John has spent over 35 years in Silicon Valley and has experience as a management consultant, entrepreneur, speaker and author. He is driven by a desire to help individuals and institutions around the world to increase their impact in a rapidly changing world.
In addition to his current role as leader of the Center for the Edge at Deloitte, he has worked with McKinsey & Co. and Boston Consulting Group. He also served as senior vice president of strategy at Atari, Inc., and is the founder of two Silicon Valley startups. Learn more on his website.
M Eifler
Artist and Researcher
BlinkPopShift (M Eifler) is an American artist and researcher who lives and works in San Francisco, California. They make chimeras, things in between things. Using sculpture, performance, video and immersive technology they focus on navigating back and forth between between different modes of thought and making (for example the physical and the virtual) in an effort to blur the strict categories humans are so fond of. Their work centers intersectional, interdisciplinary, and systems oriented thought as the most important tools for human progress. Learn more on their website.
Marshall Van Alstyne
Boston University Professor and MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy Research Associate
Professor Van Alstyne is one of the leading experts in network business models. He conducts research on information economics, covering such topics as communications markets, the economics of networks, intellectual property, social effects of technology, and productivity effects of information. As co-developer of the concept of “two sided networks” he has been a major contributor to the theory of network effects, a set of ideas now taught in more than 50 business schools worldwide. Learn more on Boston University's website.
Nathaniel Persily
Stanford Law School Professor of Law
An award-winning teacher and nationally recognized constitutional law expert, Professor Persily, JD ’98, focuses on the law of democracy, addressing issues such as voting rights, political parties, campaign finance and redistricting. A sought-after nonpartisan voice in voting rights, he has served as a court-appointed expert to draw legislative districting plans for Georgia, Maryland and New York and as special master for the redistricting of Connecticut’s congressional districts. Most recently, he also served as the Senior Research Director for the Presidential Commission on Election Administration, a bipartisan commission created by the President to deal with the long lines at the polling place and other administrative problems witnessed in the 2012 election. Learn more on Stanford's website.
Tarleton Gillespie
Microsoft Research New England Principal Researcher
Tarleton Gillespie is Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research New England, the newest permanent member of the Social Media Collective, (joining danah boyd, Nancy Baym, Kate Crawford, and Mary Gray) Microsoft Research’s team of sociologists, anthropologists, and communication & media scholars studying the impact of information technology on social and political life. Tarleton also retains an adjunct Associate Professor position with Cornell University, where he has been on the faculty for over a decade. Learn more on Microsoft's website.
Will Tracy
Santa Fe Institute Vice President for Strategic Partnerships
William M. Tracy is the Vice President for Strategic Partnerships at Santa Fe Institute. His academic work lies at the intersection of complex systems and strategic management, with a focus on how boundedly-rational actors approach novel problems. Will comes to SFI from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he was the undergraduate program director for the Lally School of Management and a faculty member. He is proficient in Mandarin Chinese, and formerly served as the Associate Director of CSSS-Beijing, which was jointly administered by SFI and the Institute of Theoretical Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Before entering academia, Will was a Junior Professional Associate at The World Bank, where he focused on Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Will also has private sector and entrepreneurial experience in the US, China, and India. He holds a Ph.D. in management with a certificate in human complex systems from UCLA, and a BA (cum laude) in economics from Swarthmore College. Learn more on SFI's website