Dr Hyejin Youn

Hyejin Youn is a senior research fellow of the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the University of Oxford and a research fellow at the Santa Fe Institute. She is also a principal investigator of the research program, Science of Science Policy, funded by U.S. National Science Foundation.

As a physicist, she is interested in developing for mathematical, theoretical frameworks for the underlying general principles generating and governing the dynamics of complex systems especially in the socio-economic realm: cities and innovation. Her focus is mainly the creation of wealth and the generation of innovations. The question which unites various research efforts is: what are the mechanisms underlying wealth creation, innovation and technological change? Cities have played the privileged role in such areas, and generally in the development of human civilization. Therefore understanding cities in terms of how urban environments foster wealth creation and innovation is key to understanding and predicting the direction of our human society is taking.