Iain D. Couzin

Current Institution

Director

Max Planck Institute for Ornithology, Department of Collective Behaviour, and, Department of Biology, University of Konstanz

Scholar: 2008

Awarded Institution

Princeton University

Website

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.