Colloquium – Venkat Venkatasubramanian

WENDELL G. HOLLADAY LECTURE
Venkat Venkatasubramanian, Columbia University

Statistical Mechanics and Game Theory in the Self-Organizing Dynamics of people, Birds, and Networks

The physics of active matter, such as ant colonies and bird flocks, exhibiting interesting self-organizing dynamical behavior, has gained considerable importance in recent years. Recent theoretical advances use techniques from hydrodynamics, kinetic theory, and non-equilibrium statistical physics. However, for biological agents, these don’t seem to recognize explicitly their critical feature, namely, the role of survival-driven purpose and the attendant pursuit of maximum utility.
In this talk, I will present a novel game-theoretic framework, called statistical teleodynamics, that accounts for this feature explicitly and shows how it can be integrated with conventional statistical mechanics to develop a unified theory of arbitrage equilibrium in active matter.
The theory proposes a spectrum of self-actualizing capabilities, going from none to completely strategic decision-making, and envisions the various examples of active matter systems occupying some place in this spectrum. I will show how statistical teleodynamics reduces to familiar results in statistical mechanics in the limit of zero self-actualization. At the other extreme, in an economic setting, it provides novel insights into the emergence of income distributions and their fairness in an ideal free-market society. As examples of agents in between these limits, I will discuss how the theory predicts pattern formation in the flocking of birds and large language models.

Bio:Professor Venkat Venkatasubramanian is Samuel Ruben-Peter G. Viele Professor of Engineering in the Department of Chemical Engineering, Professor of Computer Science (Affiliate), and Professor of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research (Affiliate) at Columbia University. He earned his Ph. D. in Chemical Engineering at Cornell, M.S. in Physics at Vanderbilt, and B. Tech. in Chemical Engineering at the University of Madras, India. He taught at Purdue University for over two decades before returning to Columbia in 2011.
Venkat is a complex-dynamical-systems theorist interested in developing mathematical models of their structure, function, and behavior from fundamental conceptual principles. He considers himself an artist in science whose natural tendency is to conduct curiosity-driven research in a style that might be regarded as impressionistic, emphasizing conceptual issues over mere techniques. Venkat’s research interests are diverse, ranging from AI to systems engineering to theoretical physics to economics, but are generally focused on understanding complexity and emergent behavior in different domains.

November 6, 2025 @ 4:10pm (CST) in 4327 Stevenson Center; Reception at 3:30 PM in 7330C Stevenson Center

Hosts: J Velkovska