Kurvers, Ralf

• Since 2019 External Principal Investigator Excellence Cluster, Science of Intelligence, Technical University, Berlin, Germany
• Since 2019 Senior Research Scientist, Centre for Adaptive Rationality, MPI for Human Development, Berlin, Germany
• Since 2015 Research scientist, Centre for Adaptive Rationality, MPI for Human Development, Berlin, Germany
• 2011-2014 Rubicon Postdoctoral Fellowship, Dept. Fish Biology and Ecology, Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, Berlin, Germany
• 2007-2011 PhD Resource Ecology Group, Wageningen University, the Netherlands

Selected Publications

• Schakowski A, Deffner D, Kortet R, Niemelä PT, Kavelaars MM, Monk CT, Pykälä M & Kurvers RHJM (2026). High-precision tracking of human foragers reveals adaptive social information use in the wild. Science 391: eady1055.

• Wu CM, Deffner D, Kahl B, Leuker C, Meder B, Ho M & Kurvers RHJM (2025). Adaptive mechanisms of social and asocial learning in immersive collective foraging. Nature Communications 16: 3539.

• Zöller N, Berger J, Lin I, Fu N, Komarneni J, Barabucci G, Laskowski K, Shia V, Harack B, Chu EA, Trianni V, Kurvers RHJM* & Herzog SM* (2025). Human-AI collectives most accurately diagnose clinical vignettes. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 122: e2426153122.

• Sultan M, Tump AN, Ehmann N, Lorenz-Spreen P, Hertwig R, Gollwitzer A & Kurvers RHJM (2024). Susceptibility to Online Misinformation: A Systematic Meta-Analysis of Demographic and Psychological Factors. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 121: e2409329121.

• Deffner D, Mezey D, Kahl B, Schakowski A, Wu C, Romanczuk P & Kurvers RHJM (2024). Collective incentives reduce over-exploitation of social information in unconstrained human groups. Nature Communications 15: 2683.

• Tump AN*, Deffner D*, Pleskac TJ, Romanczuk P & Kurvers RHJM (2023). A cognitive computational approach to social and collective decision-making. Perspectives on Psychological Science 6: 17456916231186964

• Tump AN, Pleskac T & Kurvers RHJM (2020). Wise or mad crowds? The cognitive mechanisms underlying information cascades. Science Advances 6: eabb0266.

• Kurvers RHJM, Herzog SM, Hertwig R, Krause J, Moussaid M, Argenziano G, Zalaudek I, Carney PA & Wolf M (2019). How to detect high performing individuals and groups: decision similarity predicts accuracy. Science Advances 5: eaaw9011.

• Kurvers RHJM, Krause S, Viblanc PE, Herbert-Read JE, Zaslansky P, Domenici P, Marras S, Steffensen JF, Wilson ADM, Couillaud P & Krause J (2017) The Evolution of Lateralization in Group Hunting Sailfish. Current Biology 27: 521-526.

• Kurvers RHJM, Herzog SM, Hertwig R, Krause J, Carney PA, Bogart A, Argenziano G, Zalaudek I & Wolf M (2016) Boosting medical diagnostics by pooling independent judgments. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113: 8777-8782.

• Kurvers RHJM, Krause J, Croft DP, Wilson ADM & Wolf M (2014) The evolutionary and ecological consequences of animal social networks. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 29: 326-335. * Equal contributions

Grants and Awards

• 2023-2026: Excellence Cluster Science of Intelligence Research Grant. The dynamics between collective search and avoidance. link (€608.000). 
• 2022-2025: Horizon Europe Framework Programme (HORIZON). Human Artificial Collective Intelligence in Open-Ended Decision Making. link (€2,791,311.00).
• 2021-2024: German Research Foundation (DFG) Grant. Individual, Collective and Environmental Drivers of Human Foraging Dynamics in the Wild. (€535.680)
• 2020-2023: Excellence Cluster, Science of Intelligence Research Grant. Weighing personal and social information in cooperative problem solving. link (€657.097)
• 2019-2022: Excellence Cluster, Science of Intelligence Research Grant. The Collective Dynamics Underlying Personal and Social Information Integration. link  (€313.476)
• 2016-2019: German Research Foundation (DFG) Grant. The Role of Individual Differences in Collective Behaviour. link. (€292.050)
• 2011-2014: NWO Rubicon Postdoctoral Fellowship. Who leads, who follows? Linking personality to collective decision making. link (€118.08)

Reviewing service

Papers (~150 unique manuscripts)

Nature | Nature Communications | PNAS | Current Biology | Trends in Ecology and Evolution | Ecology Letters | New England Journal of Medicine | The British Medical Journal | Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B | Proceedings of the Royal Society B | Journal of the Royal Society Interface | Evolution and Human Behaviour | Journal of Experimental Social Psychology | Journal of Cognition | Frontiers in Zoology | Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences | The Quarterly Review of Biology | Journal of Animal Ecology | Biology Letters | Journal of Evolutionary Biology | Animal Behaviour | Behavioral Ecology | Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology | Oikos | Journal of Theoretical Biology | Journal of Fish Biology | Scientific Reports | Journal of Experimental Biology | Wildlife Biology | Journal of Mammalogy | Environmental Conservation | Science of the Total Environment | Environmental Pollution | Axios | Ethology | Ethology, Ecology & Evolution | Behaviour | Computers in Human Behavior | Journal of Intelligence | Journal of Behavioral Decision Making | Decision | Evolutionary Psychology | Current Zoology | Journal of Field Ornithology | Journal of Applied Ichthyology | Marine Environmental Research | PLoS ONE  | BMJ Open | BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making | Medical Decision Making | Journal of Patient Experience | Royal Society Open Science | PeerJ

Book (chapters)

Animal Social Networks (ed. by Krause, James, Franks & Croft) | The Social Life of Greylag Geese (ed. by Scheiber, Weiss, Hemetsberger, Kotrschal) | The Drive for Knowledge: the Science of Human Information Seeking (ed. by Eric Schulz).

Grants

National Science Foundation (NSF) | Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) | United States – Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF) | Association for the study of Animal Behaviour (ASAB) | Zukunftskolleg University of Konstanz