Forschungsinteressen
I am a computational biologist with an expertise in self-organized social systems. My research focuses on the collective behaviour of animals and humans, such as the collective decision-making of fish schools and the collective escape of bird flocks, aiming to understand how and why complex spatiotemporal patterns emerge in nature. To identify their underlying mechanisms and the adaptive value of individual social behaviour, I combine the analysis of empirical data, often collected with the help of biomimetic robotics, and the development of computer simulations. I am particularly interested in the role of individual variation in collectives, as well as in comparisons across species and ecological contexts.
Vita
Main Education & Research:
- 2025-present: Postdoctoral Humboldt Fellow, Max Planck Institute for Human Development (Germany)
- 2024-2025: Postdoctoral Research Associate, University of Tuscia (Italy)
- 2024: Visiting Research Fellow, Humboldt University of Berlin (Germany)
- 2022-2024: Postdoctoral Research Assistant, Swansea University (U.K.)
- 2017-2022: PhD in Theoretical Biology, University of Groningen (the Netherlands)
- 2016-2017: MSc in Computational Methods in Ecology and Evolution, Imperial College London (U.K.)
- 2015: Student Research Assistant, University of Glasgow (U.K.)
2011-2016: BSc in Biology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece)
Selected Fellowships & Grants:
Scientific Meeting Organisation Grant (2026), The Company of Biologists
Humboldt Research Fellowship (2024), the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation
Postdoctoral International Travelling Fellowships (PITF) (2023), International Society for Fish Biology (FSBI)
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Equal Opportunities Initiative Fund (2017), European Society of Evolutionary Biology (ESEB)
Selected Publications:
- Papadopoulou M., Hildenbrandt H., Storms R.F. et al. A mechanistic understanding of collective escape in starling flocks. Communications Biology (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-026-10173-4
- Papadopoulou M., Hildenbrandt H., Hemelrijk CK. A Data-Inspired Framework to Simulate Collective Behaviour of Predator-Prey Systems. Adaptive Behavior (2025), 33(5-6):291-305. https://doi.org/10.1177/10597123251364750
- Papadopoulou M., Ball M., Bartashevich P., Burns AL., et al. Active interactions between animals and technology: biohybrid approaches for animal behaviour research. Animal Behaviour (2025), 224:123160. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2025.123160
- Papadopoulou M., Garnier S., King AJ. swaRmverse: An R package for the comparative analysis of collective motion. Methods in Ecology and Evolution (2024), 16(1):29-39. https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.14460
- Papadopoulou M., Fürtbauer I., O'Bryan LR. et al. Dynamics of collective motion across time and species. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (2023), 378(1874):20220068. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2022.0068
- Papadopoulou M., Hildenbrandt H., Sankey DW., et al. Self-organization of collective escape in pigeon flocks. PLoS computational biology (2022), 18(1):e1009772. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009772