Founder & Director

Associate Professor of Economics, The University of Texas at Austin

PhD - Economics, University of California, Los Angeles

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Peter Bergman’s journey to founding Learning Collider is, like many founder stories, a nexus of ideas, champions, and happenstance. A *collision* course in the best way possible. 

One such collision as a middle school teacher led to a turning point in his research career - and for Learning Collider. He developed and tested a text-message solution to what he and fellow teachers call an age-old problem: implementing effective, real-time communication between schools and families. 

That initial text messaging experiment led to many more. Soon, he was initiating and partnering in research opportunities with similar threads: making information readily available and actionable, equitably designing and implementing technology, using predictive analytics to support household and policy decisions, and improving outcomes for low-income families at scale. 

Within these threads, he saw an opportunity to build a lab that both supported researchers and accelerated social impact through robust data systems and large tech platforms. Peter launched Learning Collider and currently leads the lab’s research endeavors, bridging connections among researchers, data and technology partners, philanthropists, public agencies, and many more. 

In addition to his leadership at the lab, Peter is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Texas at Austin. He serves as Co-Chair of the Improving Education Outcomes in North America Initiative at the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) at MIT and is a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He is also an Innovation Fellow at Schmidt Futures; a Distinguished Affiliate at CESifo; and a Research Affiliate at the Institute for Labor Economics. In entrepreneurial research endeavors, he started EdNudge, which was acquired by AllHere, for which he remains an advisor.

Peter’s research has been published in a number of acclaimed journals including Nature Human Behavior, Journal of Political Economy, Journal of Human Resources, Journal of Labor Economics, and Education Finance and Policy. His expertise and growing publications have led to interviews with and coverage by The New York Times, NPR, The Atlantic, CNN, Vox, and more.

Peter resides in Austin with his family, is an accomplished guitarist, and insists he won’t ever retire. He also insists that he has no superpowers. The rest of the Learning Collider team disagrees…but we have yet to design a study to test our hypothesis.