Erica Jen (Chinese: 任峻瑞; Rén Jùnrùi, circa 1952 – November 12, 2023) was an American applied mathematician. She was a researcher at

Los Alamos National Laboratory Los Alamos National Laboratory (often shortened as Los Alamos and LANL) is one of the sixteen research and development laboratories of the United States Department of Energy (DOE), located a short distance northwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico, ...

, a faculty member at the

University of Southern California The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in C ...

, and a scientific director and faculty member at the

Santa Fe Institute The Santa Fe Institute (SFI) is an independent, nonprofit theoretical research institute located in Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States and dedicated to the multidisciplinary study of the fundamental principles of complex adaptive systems, includ ...

. Jen's research was based on the mathematical analysis of chaotic and complex behavior. Research areas have included the singular integral equations for crack propagation, the mathematics of cellular automata - a class of dynamical systems that evolve according to simple local interaction rules - and mechanisms of robustness in natural and social systems.

Early life and education

Jen was born in 1952 to Chih-Kung Jen, a Chinese-born physicist who played a leading role in the 1970s in reestablishing scientific exchanges between the U.S. and China. After her junior year at

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

, Jen went to Beijing University for further education. She became the first American national to be allowed to study in China since 1949 and the first foreigner since the Cultural Revolution After returning to the U.S., Jen obtained a Ph.D. in applied mathematics from

Stony Brook University Stony Brook University (SBU), officially the State University of New York at Stony Brook, is a public research university in Stony Brook, New York. Along with the University at Buffalo, it is one of the State University of New York system's ...

of the

State University of New York The State University of New York (SUNY, , ) is a system of public colleges and universities in the State of New York. It is one of the largest comprehensive system of universities, colleges, and community colleges in the United States. Led by c ...

and was the first postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Nonlinear Studies at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Career

Jen served for the period 1983-86 as a university scholar and assistant professor of mathematics at the

. In 1986, Jen became a staff member in the theoretical division and acting deputy director of the Center for Nonlinear Studies at

. In 1995, Jen joined the

, a leading interdisciplinary research center for the study of

complex adaptive system A complex adaptive system is a system that is ''complex'' in that it is a dynamic network of interactions, but the behavior of the ensemble may not be predictable according to the behavior of the components. It is ''adaptive'' in that the individ ...

s. She first served as vice president for academic affairs and then as a research professor. Jen was the principal investigator for innovative programs in evolutionary dynamics, social networks, and distributed learning. During her tenure at the Santa Fe Institute, Jen developed the groundbreaking SFI program on the robustness of physical, biological, ecological, and social systems. After 2003, Jen served as external faculty, science board member, and science board fellow at the Santa Fe Institute. Jen was an editor of Physica D: Nonlinearity. She died on November 12, 2023.

Selected bibliography

*Daily Life: An Experience with Peking Youth in The China Difference (1979), Ross Terrill, ed., New York: Harper & Row *D. Campbell, J. P. Crutchfield, J. D. Farmer, and E. Jen. Experimental Mathematics: The Role of Computation in Nonlinear Science. Comm. ACM 28 1985: 374 *1989 Lectures on Complex Systems, Erica Jen (ed.), Santa Fe Institute Studies in the Sciences of Complexity, Addison-Wesley, 1989 *Global properties of cellular automata, J. Statistical Physics, vol 43, p 219-242 (1986). *Scaling of preimages in cellular automata," Complex Systems 1 (1987) 1045-1062 *Exact solvability and quasiperiodicity in one-dimensional cellular automata," Nonlinearity 4 (1991), 251-276 *Stable or Robust? What's the Difference? Complexity 8(3): 12-18 (2003) *Robust Design: A Repertoire of Biological, Ecological, and Engineering Case Studies, E. Jen (ed), Santa Fe Institute Studies on the Sciences of Complexity, Oxford University Press, 2005

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Jen, Erica 1950s births 2023 deaths 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians Peking University alumni University of Southern California faculty Los Alamos National Laboratory Santa Fe Institute people Yale University alumni Complex systems scientists Stony Brook University alumni 20th-century American women mathematicians 21st-century American women mathematicians