Iain D. Couzin
Research Interests
Collective Behavior in Biological Systems
Research in the Couzin lab focuses on understanding collective behavior; how large-scale biological patterns result from the actions and interactions of the individual components of a system. Self-organized pattern formation is studied in a wide range of biological systems, including ants, fish schools, bird flocks, locust / cricket swarms and human crowds.
Areas of particular interest include:
- Collective decision-making in groups.
- Creating computer models (mostly individual-based) to elucidate the relationship between biological pattern forming processes over a range of spatial and temporal scales.
- The spread, and use, of information in animal populations (information transmission across dynamic networks; social learning).
- How the movement of, and interactions among, individuals produces the dynamics of the population they make up.
- Developing computer vision software to record and analyze the movement and behavior of a large number (hundreds) of organisms (e.g. insects, fish) concurrently.
- Applying biologically-inspired algorithms to technological applications.