“My research focuses on predictive modeling of collective behavior in biological systems using real-world data. I investigate collective behavior in living systems by integrating empirical data with concepts and methods from statistical physics, dynamical systems, and model selection. Working closely with broad-minded collaborators – willing and excited by the prospect of exploring new ideas and solving hard problems – I seek to discover the computational logic of adaptive collective systems.

• How does information build in a distributed network of neurons involved in making a binary decision?
• How do schooling fish respond to one another in order to manage tradeoffs between group stability and sensitivity?
• How do innovative ideas emerge from incremental results shared among scientists?

The ultimate goal is to quantitatively map the space of strategies that biosocial systems use functional collective behavior. "