Santa Fe Institute Collaboration Platform

Origins

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Contact: Chris Kempes, Project Principal Investigator, ckempes@santafe.edu

User:ChrisKempes

From Origins

Chris Kempes.jpeg

Name
Chris Kempes
Affiliation
SFI
Email address
ckempes@santafe.edu

Biography

Research Interests: In the broadest terms, Chris aims to find theories and principles that apply to a wide range of biological scales and hierarchies. Chris generally focuses his work on biological architecture—which may include phenomena ranging from explicit biological morphology to metabolic and genetic network structure—as an intermediate between organism physiology and environmental conditions. Mathematical and physical theories lie at the heart of his methodologies to predict how evolution has shaped architecture and how this, in turn, forms a foundation for reliable predictions of environmental response and interaction. His work spans the scales of genetic information architecture to the morphology of microbial individuals and communities to the regional variation of plant traits and their feedback with climate and available resources. In so doing, he aims to connect these first-order trends to the limitations imposed by environments in order to predict specific evolutionary events and consequences. Several collaborations with experimentalists and theorists have led to models that inform experiments and assimilate empirical data in fields including single-cell experimental biology and forest dynamics.

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Involvement in the Origins Research Theme

Organizer

This user is listed as an organizer for the following meetings:

  1. Evolving Chemical Systems
  2. Information Transitions in Life
  3. Major Transitions in Life: Origins to Translation

Presenter

This user is listed as a presenter for the following agenda items:

  1. Evolving Chemical Systems/Overview of the meeting and foundational concepts
  2. Major Transitions in Life: Origins to Translation/Extrapolating from general theories of modern life to the origins of life
  3. Major Transitions in Life: Origins to Translation/Welcome to SFI and RCN Introduction