David Krakauer is president and William H. Miller Professor of Complex Systems at the Santa Fe Institute.

David’s research explores the evolution of intelligence on earth. This includes studying the evolution of genetic, neural, linguistic, social and cultural mechanisms supporting memory and information processing, and exploring their generalities. At each level David asks how information is acquired, stored, transmitted, robustly encoded, and processed. This work is undertaken through the use of empirically supported computational and mathematical models.

David served as the founding director of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, the co-director of the Center for Complexity and Collective Computation, and was professor of mathematical genetics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He has been a visiting fellow at the Genomics Frontiers Institute at the University of Pennsylvania, a Sage Fellow at the Sage Center for the Study of the Mind at the University of Santa Barbara, a long-term fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and visiting professor of evolution at Princeton University. He has previously served as chair of the faculty and a resident professor and external professor at the Santa Fe Institute.

In 2012 David was included in the Wired Magazine Smart List as one of 50 people “who will change the World.” In 2016 he was included in Entrepreneur Magazine’s visionary leaders advancing global research and business.