Dr. Kauffman's scientific interests are developmental genetics, theoretical biology, and evolution and the origin of life.

After an Internship and Postdoctoral Fellowship in genetics in Cincinnati, Dr. Kauffman joined the Department of Theoretical Biology, University of Chicago in 1969. From 1973 to 1975, he was in the Public Health Service at the National Cancer Institute. He joined the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania in 1975 as Associate Professor and became Professor in 1980. Since 1985, he has served as a consultant to Los Alamos National Laboratory, and from 1986 to 1998 as Professor at the Santa Fe Institute, where he is presently an external professor. He was awarded the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship, 1987-92.

In 1996, Dr. Kauffman formed Bios Group LP, in partnership with Ernst and Young. He has published two books, both with Oxford University Press: The Origins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution (1993), and At Home in the Universe (1995). His third, Investigations, is in press (Oxford University Press, 1999). His most recent patent (Marc Ballivet, Co-inventor, U.S. #5,723,323, March 3, 1998), is titled "Method of identifying a stochastically-generated peptide, polypeptide or protein having ligand binding property and compositions thereof".