Jordan Kemp is an NSF Graduate Research Fellow pursuing a PhD at University of Chicago Department of Physics. He researches novel theories of social and biological organization by studying agent decision-making in noisy environments. By combining techniques from statistical physics, information theory, and cognitive psychology, he derives theories for agent learning and growth, then studies how these behaviors aggregate at the population level to drive inequality and cooperation. He is working on questions such as:
- How does information inform decisions, adaptation, and grow in noisy environments?
- How do information disparities across populations promote inequality and social mobility
- How do information complementarities (synergies) across heterogeneous agents determine the organization and selection of groups?
- How are growth and learning limited by environmental fluctuations, and how do these limits affect life-course strategies?
This exciting research blends ideas from physics, machine learning, and behavioral psychology, and hopes to answer open questions from across the social sciences.
It is conducted through the Mansueto Institute of Urban Innovation under the advice of Luís Bettencourt and Arvind Murugan.
In the past, he has conducted experimental research in both quantum computing and simulation using neutral cold atoms with the Bernien Lab at UChicago,
and in gravitational wave detection with Rana Adhikari and the LIGO Group at Caltech
