SANTA FE INSTITUTE PRESIDENT TO STEP DOWN

After Seven Years at the Helm, President Ellen Goldberg Shifts Her Attention to Research, Specifically the Santa Fe Institute Consortium: Increasing Human Potential Program, and a National Institutes of Health (NIH) Initiative

(PRWEB) May 24, 2002

Ellen Goldberg, president of the Santa Fe Institute, publicly announced that she will be stepping down as president of the Institute, effective January 2003. For the past seven years President Goldberg has guided the Institute on a path that has resulted in the Institute having a sound research and financial footing. Because the SFI is in such good shape she would like to transfer her energies to focus on research, specifically the Santa Fe Institute Consortium (SFIC): Increasing Human Potential Program that she and George Cowan, founding president of the SFI and originator of the project, will run.

President Goldberg is not leaving the Santa Fe Institute. As she said, "I love SFI and I'm not going away. SFI's strength is in its people, and we continue to draw the best and the brightest researchers who are, in turn, supported by an excellent staff." She continued, "I look forward to remaining actively involved and working with researchers, foundations, and others as George and I build the SFIC. Early childhood education has always been a passion of mine and I consider myself incredibly lucky to be able to work on this very important initiative."

The SFIC is a research theme within the Institute. The consortium involves university researchers across the nation bringing together cognitive neuroscientists, developmental psychologists, and neurobiologists to study human intellectual development using advanced technology in brain mapping. This interdisciplinary program also combines theory and experiment and is a distributed longitudinal endeavor.

In addition she plans to remain involved in the National Institutes of Health (NIH) program at SFI that she and computer scientist and mathematician, Lee Segel, Weizmann Institute of Science, have developed to bring together physicists, mathematicians and experimental biologists through a series of short courses and collaborative workshops.

A search committee has been formed and is in active recruitment for a new president.

Founded in 1984, the Santa Fe Institute is a private 501 (c) 3 research and education center. The Institute provides a unique environment for visiting and resident scientists from the physical, biological, computational and social sciences. SFI operates as a visiting institution to catalyze new collaborative, multidisciplinary research; to break down the barriers between the traditional disciplines; to spread its ideas and methodologies to other institutions; and to encourage the practical application of its results.

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