Jacob Calvert

Dr. Jacob Calvert is a Research Fellow at Georgia Institute of Technology and a visiting postdoctoral fellow at the Santa Fe Institute. Previously, he was a Staff Research Scientist at a stealth startup and a PhD alumnus from the University of California, Berkeley (2022), where he studied under Professor Alan Hammond. He holds M.Sc. degrees from the University of Oxford (2017) and University of Bristol (2016), along with a B.S. from the University of Illinois (2015).

• Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley (2022)
• M.Sc., University of Oxford (2017)
• M.Sc., University of Bristol (2016)
• B.S., University of Illinois (2015)

His research focuses on collective behavior, nonequilibrium self-organization, and the application of probability theory to data science. He explores how systems like ant colonies and programmable matter exhibit phase transitions dependent on individual counts (critical numerosity) and investigates principles like rattling theory to predict steady states in nonequilibrium systems.

His publications span Markov processes, statistical physics, and computational biology, with recent work on stationary distributions in random Markov chains, hierarchical self-organization algorithms, and numerosity-driven clustering in collective systems. Key contributions include formalizing critical numerosity as a zero-one law and demonstrating how local dynamics govern global self-organization in nonequilibrium settings.

Notable affiliations include the Simons Laufer Mathematical Sciences Institute (Berlekamp Postdoctoral Fellow, Spring 2025) and collaborations with interdisciplinary teams studying programmable matter and biological collectives.