Stefan Thurner is President of CSH, full professor for Science of Complex Systems at the Medical University of Vienna, external professor at the Santa Fe Institute, and part-time senior researcher at IIASA.
Stefan Thurner is full professor for Science of Complex Systems at the Medical University of Vienna, where he chairs Section for Science of Complex Systems. Since 2007 he is external professor at the Santa Fe Institute, since 2010 he is a part-time senior researcher at IIASA.
He obtained a PhD in theoretical physics from the Technical University of Vienna in 1995, and a PhD in economics from the University of Vienna in 2001. He held postdoc positions at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin and Boston University before he joined the faculty of the University of Vienna in 1999 and later Medical University. He obtaind his habilitation in theoretical physics in 2001. With his engagement with the Santa Fe Institute – he shifted his focus from theoretical physics to biological and complex systems, which are now his main scientific areas.
Since 1995 Thurner has published more than 170 scientific articles in fundamental physics (topological excitations in quantum field theories, entropy for complex systems), applied mathematics (wavelet statistics, fractal harmonic analysis, anomalous diffusion), complex systems (network theory, evolutionary systems), life sciences (network medicine, gene regulatory networks, bioinformatics, heart beat dynamics, cell motility), economics (price formation, regulation, systemic risk) and lately in social sciences (opinion formation, buerocratic inefficiency, collective human behavior in virtual worlds). He holds 2 patents.
Thurner has (co-) organized many international workshops, conferences and summerschools, and has himself presented more than 200 talks. His work has received broad interest from the media such as the New York Times, BBC world, Nature, New Scientist, Physics World and is featured in more than 400 newspaper, radio and television reports. He works in a network of scientists mostly around the Santa Fe Institute, the former Collegium Budapest, where he was a fellow in 2007, and many European initiatives. Thurner serves as a member of several scientific and editorial boards.
Apart from science Thurner has been active in quantitative financial consulting for financial institutions since 2003. In 1993 he founded a non-professional chamber music group for which he still plays the clarinet.