Papadopoulou, Marina (she/her)

Self-organised collective behaviour

I am a computational biologist with an expertise in self-organized social systems. My research focuses mainly on the collective behaviour of animals, 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.