About

Manfred Laubichler is a Global Futures Professor and President's Professor of Theoretical Biology and History of Biology at Arizona State University. He serves as the director of the School of Complex Adaptive Systems and the Decision Theater. His research focuses on evolutionary novelties from genomes to knowledge systems, the structure of evolutionary theory, and the evolution of knowledge. Laubichler's academic background includes undergraduate training in zoology, philosophy, and mathematics at the University of Vienna, and graduate training in biology at Yale University and in History/History of Science at Princeton University. He is an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute, a visiting scholar at the Max Planck Institute for Geoanthropology in Jena, Germany, and an external faculty member at the Complexity Science Hub Vienna. Laubichler is also an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a former fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, and Vice Chair of the Global Climate Forum.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Computer Science
• Engineering ethics
• Medicine
• Virology
• Knowledge management
• Gerontology
• Psychiatry
• Engineering
• Law
• Family medicine
• Public relations
• Pedagogy

Selected publications

• The impact of culturally tailored video interventions for Long COVID among Hispanic/Latino populations

  Journal of Global Health · 2026-05-15

  articleOpen access

  Background: Long COVID has disproportionately affected Hispanic/Latino communities, particularly in Arizona. Structural inequities contribute to disparities, but limited culturally tailored health information remains an underexplored barrier to effective communication. This study evaluated the impact of culturally designed Long COVID educational videos for Hispanic/Latino audiences. Methods: We developed animated videos incorporating cultural symbols and diversity cues. Participants completed pre- and post-intervention surveys assessing Long COVID knowledge. Pre-post regression analyses examined knowledge gains, subgroup differences (education, gender, lived experience), and the influence of cultural design elements. Results: Baseline knowledge was higher among participants with greater educational attainment; however, post-intervention knowledge levels were similar across education groups. Female participants demonstrated lower scores than males, diverging from typical health information-seeking trends. Participants with lived experience of Long COVID reported higher baseline knowledge. Cultural design features, including symbolism and perceived diversity, showed modest effects, particularly among younger viewers. Overall, knowledge increased significantly following video exposure across all subgroups. Conclusions: Culturally tailored Long COVID videos effectively enhanced knowledge among Hispanic/Latino audiences, mitigating educational disparities and engaging individuals with diverse experiences. While cultural design elements had limited influence, they may enhance relevance for specific subgroups. These findings support the potential of culturally responsive video interventions to improve health education access in underserved communities and highlight areas for refinement in future multimedia health communication strategies.

  PublisherDOI

• The extended life cycle: a multilevel–multiscale modelling framework for extended evolutionary dynamics

  Royal Society Open Science · 2026-01-14

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract A complete explanation of evolutionary change requires reconciling processes that operate across multiple levels of spatial/temporal organization. Development, the processes by which traits are generated, unfolds over an individual’s lifetime; heredity, encompassing the diverse forms of information transmission, occurs across generations; and population and ecological change often take place across longer horizons. Capturing these layered dynamics in a formal mathematical framework is essential for advancing evolutionary theory in line with recent conceptual developments, such as extended evolutionary theory (EET) or the extended evolutionary synthesis (EES). In this work, we introduce the extended life cycle (ELC), a multilevel–multiscale mathematical modelling framework that centres the life cycle as the fundamental unit of evolutionary analysis. In contrast to traditional gene-centric approaches, the ELC formalism captures the multilevel causal architecture of biological systems by modelling development, heredity, population and ecological dynamics across distinct, but interacting ontological levels. Each level is expressed as a stochastic state-space model, with multiple scales within each level. We demonstrate the utility of the ELC through a Bayesian learning application to multiscale habitat selection and show how our framework can predict latent trajectories generated from complex multilayered dynamics.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Decision Theaters and Democracy

  Risk, governance and society · 2025-01-01

  book-chapterSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Synthesis of innovation and obsolescence

  ArXiv.org · 2025-05-08

  preprintOpen access

  Innovation and obsolescence describe the dynamics of ever-churning social and biological systems, from the development of economic markets to scientific and technological progress to biological evolution. They have been widely discussed, but in isolation, leading to fragmented modeling of their dynamics. This poses a problem for connecting and building on what we know about their shared mechanisms. Here we collectively propose a conceptual and mathematical framework to transcend field boundaries and to explore unifying theoretical frameworks and open challenges. We ring an optimistic note for weaving together disparate threads with key ideas from the wide and largely disconnected literature by focusing on the duality of innovation and obsolescence and by proposing a mathematical framework to unify the metaphors between constitutive elements.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Time series forecasting of Valley fever infection in Maricopa County, AZ using LSTM

  The Lancet Regional Health - Americas · 2025-02-05 · 13 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Background: Coccidioidomycosis (CM), also known as Valley fever, is a respiratory infection. Recently, the number of confirmed cases of CM has been increasing. Precisely defining the influential factors and forecasting future infection can assist in public health messaging and treatment decisions. Methods: concentration, drought, and stringency index, were included in LSTM networks, considering their association with CM prevalence, time-lag effect, and correlation with other factors. Findings: LSTM can predict CM prevalence with accurate trend and low mean squared error (MSE). We also found a tradeoff between the length of the forecasting period and the performance of the forecasting model. The models with longer forecasting periods have less accurate trends over time and higher MSEs. Two models with different lengths of forecasting periods, 10 days and 30 days, are identified with good prediction. Interpretation: LSTM algorithms, combined with traditional statistical methods, could help with the forecasting of CM cases. By predicting the CM prevalence, our results can inform researchers, epidemiologists, clinicians, and the public in order to assist public health. Funding: "Getting to the Source of Arizona's Valley Fever Problem: A Tri-University Collaboration to Map and Characterize the Pathogen Where It Grows" funded by the Arizona Board of Regents.

  PublisherDOI

• The Extended Life Cycle: A Multiscale Modeling Framework for Extended Evolutionary Dynamics

  bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2025-05-19

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract A complete explanation of evolutionary change requires reconciling processes that operate across multiple time scales. Development, the processes by which traits are generated, unfolds over an individual’s lifetime; heredity, encompassing the diverse forms of information transmission, occurs across generations; and population and ecological change often take place over even longer temporal horizons. Capturing these layered dynamics in a formal mathematical framework is essential for advancing evolutionary theory in line with recent conceptual developments, such as Extended Evolutionary Theory (EET) or the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES). In this work, we introduce the Extended Life Cycle (ELC), a multiscale mathematical modeling framework that centers the life cycle as the fundamental unit of evolutionary analysis. In contrast to traditional gene-centric approaches, the ELC formalism captures the nested temporal structure and multilevel causal architecture of biological systems by modeling development, heredity, population, and ecological dynamics across distinct but interacting timescales. Each layer is expressed as a stochastic state-space model, enabling feedback across levels and accommodating diverse interaction topologies and inheritance systems. We demonstrate the utility of the ELC through a Bayesian simulation to estimate latent dynamics across three time scales. By formalizing the life cycle as a dynamic scaffold, the ELC offers a flexible foundation for modeling evolution in complex systems.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Parallel scaling of elite wealth in ancient Roman and modern cities with implications for understanding urban inequality

  Nature Cities · 2025-03-04

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Rapid urbanization and rising inequality are pressing global concerns, yet inequality is an ancient trait of city life that may be intrinsically connected to urbanism itself. Here we investigate how elite wealth scales with urban population size across culture and time by analyzing ancient Roman and modern cities. Using Bayesian models to address archeological uncertainties, we uncovered a consistent correlation between population size and physical expressions of elite wealth in urban spaces. These patterns suggest the presence of an ancient, enduring mechanism underlying urban inequality. Supported by an agent-based network simulation and informed by the settlement scaling theory, we propose that the observed patterns arise from common preferential attachment in social networks—a simple, yet powerful, driver of unequal access to interaction potential. Our findings open up new directions in urban scaling research and underscore the importance of understanding long-term urban dynamics to chart a course toward a fairer urban future.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The contradictions of democracy ‐ structural paradoxes and the erosion of collective agency. Insights from the Transatlantic Research Lab on Complex Societal Challenges

  GAIA - Ecological Perspectives for Science and Society · 2025-10-16

  articleOpen access

  Democratic systems are often seen as resilient, yet today they reach their limits: polarization, loss of trust, and digital discourses undermine their capacity to act. In this article, we explore how structural contradictions and communicative double binds challenge democratic practice ‐ and ask which new forms of participation are needed to secure future viability.

  PublisherDOI

• Computational Humanities

  Debates in the digital humanities · 2024-06-20 · 2 citations

  book

  Bringing together leading experts from across North America and Europe, _Computational Humanities_ redirects debates around computation and humanities digital scholarship from dualistic arguments to nuanced discourse centered around theories of knowledge and power. This volume is organized around four questions: Why or why not pursue computational humanities? How do we engage in computational humanities? What can we study using these methods? Who are the stakeholders? <br><br> Recent advances in technologies for image and sound processing have expanded computational approaches to cultural forms beyond text, and new forms of data, from listservs and code repositories to tweets and other social media content, have enlivened debates about what counts as digital humanities scholarship. Providing case studies of collaborations between humanities-centered and computation-centered researchers, this volume highlights both opportunities and frictions, showing that data and computation are as much about power, prestige, and precarity as they are about _p_\-values.

  PublisherDOI

• Using urban pasts to speak to urban presents in the Anthropocene

  Nature Cities · 2024-01-11 · 23 citations

  articleOpen access

  With more people now living in urban areas than outside of them, urbanism is becoming an increasingly important socioeconomic and ecological arena for our species in the twenty-first century. Understanding historical and regional variation in urban trajectories and land use has the potential to provide long-term perspectives on pressing contemporary challenges. Here we review how novel methods and approaches are enabling archeology to shed new light on the past 5,500 years of urban life. From exploring urban variability in ‘extreme’ environments to studying the interaction of urbanism and the Earth system, we argue that the past provides a critical, growing reservoir of knowledge for contemporary urban scientists and planners. Humanity is increasingly urban, but urban living is not new, and past examples showcase striking variation. This Review synthesizes methodological and other advances in archeology to illustrate how compellingly the past can inform current urban science and understanding.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• CAREER: Twentieth Century Theories of Development in Context

  NSF · $401k · 2007–2013

• RCN: Developing an Integrative Approach to Computational and Digital History and Philosophy of Science

  NSF · $399k · 2017–2023

• Professional Dev Fellowship: Using informatics to advance history and philosophy of science research

  NSF · $84k · 2009–2012

Frequent coauthors

• Eva Schernhammer

  Harvard University

  69 shared

• Peter F. Stadler

  Leipzig University

  45 shared

• Guido Caniglia

  Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research

  40 shared

• Jane Maienschein

  Arizona State University

  40 shared

• Gerald Steiner

  Universität für Weiterbildung Krems

  40 shared

• Brenda M. Birmann

  Brigham and Women's Hospital

  37 shared

• Martin Bertau

  TU Bergakademie Freiberg

  32 shared

• Jakob Weitzer

  Medical University of Vienna

  28 shared

Education

• M.A.

  Princeton University

  1998

• Ph.D.

  Yale University

  1997

• Other

  Yale University

  1993

• M.S., Zoology

  University of Vienna

  1991

Awards & honors

• Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advanceme…