Steen Rasmussen

Timeline

1. 1985

   A physics PhD at DTU

   He earns a PhD in the physics of complex systems at the Technical University of Denmark in 1985 and also trains in philosophy at the University of Copenhagen.

2. 1988–2007

   Twenty years at Los Alamos

   From 1988 to 2007, he works at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and leads its Self-Organized Systems team in his last five years there. He is part of the Santa Fe Institute from 1988 and is one of the founders of the artificial life movement in the late 1980s.

3. 1990s

   TRANSIMS and wildfire tools

   In the 1990s, he co-develops the Transportation Simulation System (TRANSIMS), which the US Department of Transportation implements. His web-based disaster mitigation tools are used in May 2000 during the Cerro Grande Wildfire, when 20,000 people are evacuated.

4. 2000s

   The Los Alamos Protocell Project

   At Los Alamos, he heads the Protocell Project, whose goal is lifelike artificial cells that are self-reproducing and capable of evolution. He receives a Los Alamos Achievement Award for Excellence in 2004 for protocell design and for the simulation of critical infrastructures.

5. 2004–2009

   Centers in Venice and Denmark

   In 2004, he co-founds the European Center for Living Technology in Venice, Italy. He returns to Denmark in late 2007 as director of the Center for Fundamental Living Technology at the University of Southern Denmark, and in 2009 he founds the Initiative for Science, Society and Policy.

6. 2014

   Self-organizing information strings

   In 2014, researchers at his Center for Fundamental Living Technology describe in Europhysics Letters a virtual computer experiment that finds information strings with peculiar properties. The simulated strings form a self-organizing autocatalytic network, which he suggests could be one step in the origin of the first protocell.

7. 2018

   A lifetime achievement award

   In 2018, he receives the Lifetime Achievement Award of the International Society for Artificial Life at the ALIFE conference in Tokyo. He also serves on the Danish Government's Data Ethics Expert Group in 2018.

8. As of October 2026

   Professor at SDU and SFI

   He is a professor of physics and center director at the University of Southern Denmark and an external research professor at the Santa Fe Institute. His focus is to use self-organization to engineer minimal living and intelligent processes, and he is listed as a 2026 speaker at The Science of Consciousness conference.