Research Statement

I am particularly interested in emergent patterns in complex multi-agent systems. I study both how to design effective autonomous decision-making systems as well as the rationale behind decisions of living agents in natural systems. Consequently, my transdisciplinary work connects engineering [1, 5, 10, 11, 15], computer science [12–14], and behavioral ecology [7, 9]. Recent projects have included decentralized algorithms for intelligent lighting in the built environment, formal safety verification for autonomous urban vehicles, ecological rationality in solitary foragers, and resource allocation in natural and artificial swarms. Presently, I work in a social-insect laboratory where I do both empirical and theoretical studies to infer how group-level rationality emerges from the aggregated actions of individuals. This work is equally focused on bioinspired design as it is on fundamental biology. In general, I use theories from optimization, parallel computing, networks, dynamical systems, stochasticity, and formal logic to explain or design emergent system-level phenomena. Here, I describe some of my prior research successes and pending work. Control of Groups: Cooperation, Optimal Resource Allocation, Safety, and Swarms Whereas my past work focused on the interactions of individuals with complex environments, my more recent work considers systems of many interacting individuals. In the engineering design cases, I am interested in decentralized implementations of collective group behavior that rely on little communication or coordination between individuals. In the behavioral analysis cases, I am interested in the individual proximate mechanisms that, when combined wit