Who said PIs do not do their own experiments 😄 Back in @HHMIJanelia hosted by Emily Dennis lab to collect some very cool foraging data . Stay tuned

NEW PREPRINT ALERT: Mate choice is a central problem in evolutionary biology. Daniel Bernstein from @Princeton and myself asked whether Mate choice can be formalized as foraging problem. We developed an analytically tractable optimal foraging-inspired mechanistic theory of decision-making underlying mate choice . We got interesting mate choice strategies :D across our parameter spaces from eager to patient to reserved. Check out the preprint for all details biorxiv.org/content/10.64898…

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/…

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/conf… 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/app…

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/jobp… and application portal here: stellen.uni-konstanz.de/en/j… 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