Jacob Calvert

I’m a mathematician and data scientist. I’m interested in the relationship between the behavior of individuals and that of the collectives they comprise. Fundamental scientific questions concern the forward direction, such as “How do the properties of tissues emerge from those of cells?” Grand challenges of engineering concern the reverse, like “How should I design an individual robot so that the swarm has desirable collective behavior?” These questions feature a rich interplay of statistical, computational, and physical elements, which makes their study difficult and rewarding.

Currently, I’m a Postdoctoral Fellow at Georgia Tech, where I’m affiliated with the Institute for Data Engineering and Science (IDEaS) and the Algorithms and Randomness Center (ARC), a Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow at the Santa Fe Institute, and a Visiting Fellow in the Department of Mathematics at the London School of Economics. I spent Spring 2025 as the Berlekamp Postdoctoral Fellow at the Simons Laufer Mathematical Sciences Institute.

Previously, I graduated from UC Berkeley with a PhD in statistics. Before that, I completed an MSc in theoretical physics from the University of Oxford, an MSc in mathematics from the University of Bristol, and a BS in bioengineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I am grateful to the Marshall Scholarship for supporting my studies in the UK.

I have nine years of professional experience as a data scientist. From 2015 to 2022, I worked at a clinical machine learning company called Dascena, where I led the research team that developed the first machine learning–based sepsis alert system to improve patient outcomes in a clinical trial. After Dascena was acquired, I joined Forta Health, a startup that expands access to behavioral therapy for children with autism. In parallel, I led the research team at ProGrid Ventures, a startup that develops algorithms for participating in wholesale electricity markets. I left in 2024, to focus on academic research.