Visiting Scholar
Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of Populations and Head of the Laboratory of Populations at the Rockefeller University and Columbia University, New York
- Address:
- University of Chicago
Department of Statistics
5747 S. Ellis Avenue
Chicago, IL 60637 USA
- Phone:
- 646-799-1548
- Email:
- jecohen@uchicago.edu
- Website:
- https://www.rockefeller.edu/our-scientists/heads-of-laboratories/940-joel-e-cohen/
- Additional website:
- https://lab.rockefeller.edu/cohenje/cohenall
Research
I use mathematics, statistics, and computation to understand populations, human and non-human, living or inanimate. Quantitative techniques include products of random matrices, non-negative decompositions of nonnegative matrices, random graphs (directed and undirected), eigenvalue inequalities, and various stochastic processes. Recently I have been working on a variance function (variance as a function of mean in an ensemble of probability distributions) known in ecology as Taylor's power law and in physics as fluctuation scaling. My biological interests include human populations (fertility, mortality, migration, and education), infectious diseases, food webs, and animal behaviors—and variability in all of these areas.
Last update: March 2024