Maximilian Jerdee

Maximilian Jerdee is a Complexity Postdoctoral Fellow transitioning to an Omidyar Postdoctoral Fellow position at the Santa Fe Institute in September 2025. He completed his Ph.D. in Physics at the University of Michigan under Professor Mark Newman and was affiliated with the Center for the Study of Complex Systems. He holds a B.A. in Physics from Princeton University.

Dr. Jerdee's research spans the intersection of physics, statistics, and network science, focusing on developing interpretable models to infer patterns in complex systems data. His work particularly emphasizes network structures including social networks and animal dominance hierarchies. He addresses conceptual and computational barriers in understanding complex systems, ensuring methodological tools provide unbiased assessments while developing new models aligned with mechanistic theories.

His publication record shows strong expertise in information-theoretic approaches to network analysis, with significant contributions to mutual information applications in community detection. He has also established connections between game theory, social hierarchies, and thermodynamic concepts, while making notable contributions to theoretical physics and astronomical image processing. His research combines theoretical rigor with practical algorithmic implementations inspired by physical Monte Carlo and message-passing methods.

At the Santa Fe Institute, Dr. Jerdee plans to advance his research from describing current network states to investigating the dynamic mechanisms behind observed structures, with interest in exploring methodological limitations and fundamental bounds of understanding complex systems.