A renowned theoretical physicist and one of the leading scientists researching the scientific model of cities, Geoffrey West is the foremost authority on urban growth studies. He is a professor and former president of the Santa Fe Institute in the United States.  In his recent best-selling book, Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies, he sheds light on what humans can learn from nature, and what  it takes to nurture urban growth. . He is distinguished by his unique way of delving into the quantitative predictive science in order to find the unifying principles and the underlying  simplicity of complexity, to bring forth the clarity of laws of growth and the direction our world, cities, business and lives are heading to.

Geoffrey’s research includes a wide spectrum involving metabolism, growth, aging and lifespan, sleep, cancer, ecosystems, the dynamics of cities and companies, rates of growth and innovation, and the accelerating pace of life. He has given many lectures, including at Davos and TED. He is a recipient of numerous awards and his work was selected as a breakthrough idea by the Harvard Business Review in 2006. He was featured in Time magazine’s list of “100 Most Influential People in the World” in 2007.  He has also been featured in publications such as The New York Times, Financial Times, Wired, Time, The Economist, Wall St Journal and The Scientific American and participated in television productions including Nova, National Geographic and the BBC.

He believes that cities are the key to understanding global sustainability, and this is essential to develop a global strategy for change, without leading to chaos.