Integrative Biophysics Group

So happy that my paper with Lisa Blum Moyse on how social hierarchy shapes foraging strategies is out in Physics Review Research. We develop an analytically tractable model of how leader - follower dynamics and spread of misinformation shape patch foraging. Check the paper here: journals.aps.org/prresearch/abs…

So excited we are organizing again with @AllysonSgro the Junior Scientist workshop for theoretical biophysics to take place at @HHMIJanelia from September 13 - 18, 2026 . Janelia will cover the cost of accommodation, meals and reasonable travel expenses for accepted participants. Deadline: April 16, 2026 Website: janelia.org/you-janelia/co… This workshop is intended as a "by the students, for the students" meeting. Other than the organizers and invited speakers, participants will include only students and postdocs working on a variety of problems in theoretical biophysics, broadly defined. Topics include but not limited to: ·Physical principles underlying biological function in molecular, cellular, multicellular systems ·Theory of organismal development ·Theory of animal behavior, ecological systems, and evolutionary dynamics · Data driven identification of principles in biophysical systems · Physics of active matter · Non–equilibrium thermodynamics of living systems

So excited that the Konstanz school of Collective Behavior will take place again from 20th July to 7th August , 2026. We have an amazing line up of speakers covering state of the art research on collective behavior from cells to tissues to whole organisms and across animal species from worms, flies, fish to non-human primates and human. One of a kind school that takes you on a journey exploring the complexities and the mathematical beauty of collective behavior. Application deadline : March 15th All details can be found here: exc.uni-konstanz.de/kscb/applicati…

Pls RT this ad: I have an opening for a PhD student in my @IntBioPhysics group to begin ASAP , part of a collaboration with the group of Ilya Nemenman @INemenman at Emory university. Deadline: 1st November Details here: stellen.uni-konstanz.de/jobposting/099… and application portal here: stellen.uni-konstanz.de/en/jobposting/… We are seeking a doctoral student with a quantitative background. Ideally, the candidate should have a master degree in physics but other quantitative backgrounds will be considered. The researcher will be based in the Integrative Biophysics group at the University of Konstanz and Max Planck Institute of Animal Behaviour, located in Konstanz, Germany. The project summary is as follows: Project Title: Inferring dynamical interactions in social groups Project Abstract: Social interactions are one of the most foundational building blocks of group behaviors, shaping decision making strategies across ecologies. Social groups consist of small number of individuals in contrast with collectives that consist of large number of agents. Despite the importance of social groups as a building block of living systems, there is little understanding of mechanistic details of the nature of those social interactions and how they shape emergent social functional properties. This stands in contrast with physics of collectives, which usually focus on the dynamics of very large group of individuals and have been thoroughly studied. In an experimental system or in field observations tackling social behaviors, we do not know a priori the social forces, nature of those interactions and their dynamics. Recent advances in software and hardware allow us to track the behavior of multiple individuals over extended spatio-temporal scales. Thus it is crucial to develop methodologies to infer dynamical social interactions and social forces from experimental observations. This relates closely to work done inferring "social forces" from dusty plasmas. Recent theoretical work has developed an information theoretic approach to estimate intrinsic motivation, based on maximizing an agent's empowerment (defined as the mutual information between its past actions and future states). This approach can be used to study social behaviours, where individuals choose actions without an explicit reward signal. In this project, we are planning to apply this framework to infer and understand social behaviour of small animal groups specifically locusts, mice and marmosets monkeys offering not only a mechanistic insights into mechanisms of social organization but also make quantitative evolutionary comparison of social behaviours. 1. Yu, Wentao, Eslam Abdelaleem, Ilya Nemenman, and Justin C. Burton. "Physics-tailored machine learning re-veals unexpected physics in dusty plasmas.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 122, no. 31 (2025): e2505725122. 2. Tiomkin, Stas, Ilya Nemenman, Daniel Polani, and Naftali Tishby. "Intrinsic motivation in dynamical control sys-tems.” PRX Life 2, no. 3 (2024): 033009.

Konstanz school of collective behavior 2025 was a great success. Amazing students and faculty , who spent so many hours discussing state of the art collective behavior research. We are already preparing for the 2026 version so stay tuned. Details to be updated here : exc.uni-konstanz.de/kscb/ During the last day of the school, every student gave a short presentation about their school project, thread: / n

New preprint! tl;dr — We ran around late at night to record wild rats in NYC and figured out how to quantify their behavior and environment. 🧵 w/ Dima Batenkov, @zamakany, @e_mackevicius biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

Cohesion, residence time, and habitat-choice accuracy emerge as key metrics shaped by social interaction, revealing exploration-exploitation trade-offs in the collective foraging patterns of large egalitarian groups. go.aps.org/44GrQJi

Cohesion, residence time, and habitat-choice accuracy emerge as key metrics shaped by social interaction, revealing exploration-exploitation trade-offs in the collective foraging patterns of large egalitarian groups. go.aps.org/44GrQJi

Please share around this Job ad : Are you excited about foraging ? do you want to analyse multidimensional large scale behavioural, metabolic and neural data ? I have a job opening for you :D I have an opening for a postdoc in my @IntBioPhysics group. The Postdoc will be working as part of a recently funded Human Sciences Frontiers Program (HSFP) research grant ‘”Neurometabolic mechanisms underlying social foraging” in collaboration with the experimental groups of Robert Froemke (New York University) and Jee Hyun Choi (Korean Institute of Science and Technology). The project aims to understand neuro-metabolic mechanisms underlying social foraging. The PostDoc will have the opportunity to travel to the collaborators in New York and Seoul. All details here and below in the thread : stellen.uni-konstanz.de/jobposting/817…

If you are heading to the Neuroscience Conference in Goettingen this week, make sure to go on Friday 28th March to the talk by the very talented postdoc Lisa Blum-Moyse on theoretical models of social foraging. For reference, check our preprints too: biorxiv.org/content/10.110… and biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

Very excited that this cute study is finally out as a preprint. It began in @neurobridges 2023 when Tal Nahari approached me after my lecture on foraging theory wondering : " I have some saccadic eye movement data that looks like your patch foraging model" . Here we are, two years after, it turns out that one can recast saccadic eye movements during an information exploration task as a patch foraging problem. We claim that this might be a generic property of saccadic eye movement ( Share your data with us if you want :D ) . Follow along the thread to know more /n

Plz share around : The tradition continues, the Konstanz School of Collective Behavior will take place from July 21st to August 8th , 2025. Application deadline: April 15 ( exc.uni-konstanz.de/kscb/applicati… ) . We have an amazing line up of speakers covering all aspects of collective behavior across a variety of systems ( more faculty to be added) : Iain Couzin ( Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior , Konstanz) @icouzin Peter Dayan ( Max Planck Institute of Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen) @MPICybernetics Ilya  Nemenman ( Emory University , USA) @INemenman Yonatan Loewenstein ( Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel) @ELSCbrain Aneta Koseska ( Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology of Behavior, Bonn) @KoseskaL Francesco Ginelli ( Università degli Studi dell'Insubria, Italy) Thejasvi Ravindra  Beleyur ( Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, Konstanz) @BeleyurThejasvi Liang Li ( Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, Konstanz) Giovanni Reinna ( University of Konstanz, Konstanz) @joefresna Einat Couzin-Fuchs ( University of Konstanz, Konstanz ) @einatcouzin Ofer Feinermann ( Weizmann Institute of Sciences, Israel) @WeizmannScience Naama Brenner ( Israel Institute of Technology, Israel) @TechnionLive Ariana Strandburg-Peshkin ( Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior , Konstanz) @ariSPeshkin Wataru Toyokawa (Riken Center for Brain Science in Tokyo). @WataruToyokawa Raphaela Heesen ( University of Konstanz, Konstanz) Caroline Schuppli ( Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior , Konstanz) @carolschuppli Michael Chimento ( University of Konstanz, Konstanz) @evogom @CBehav @MPI_animalbehav @UniKonstanz

Very excited for this new study with my very talented postdoc Lisa Blum Moyse ( @IntBioPhysics ) where we develop an analytically tractable model of how social hierarchy shapes foraging decisions, in a patch foraging context. @CBehav Social hierarchy can be modeled as a group of agents comprised of leaders and followers .Followers can interact with leaders in different ways, either follow leaders (as they leave or arrive to the patch ) or receive false information ( misinformation) through false belief sharing about reward or patch quality. We treated each of those case mathematically. thread/

Students + postdocs in theoretical biophysics 👉 Join us @HHMIJanelia in October to present your research, engage in lively discussions, and network with peers. ✈️ Hotel, meals, & travel covered Learn more + apply by June 10 @ janelia.news/THB25 @HHMINews @zamakany @AllysonSgro