Charlotte Hemelrijk is currently a Rosalind Franklin Fellow in the department of Behavioural Ecology and Self-Organization at Groningen. She heads the group on the self-organization of social systems. She is interested in all aspects of self-organization in social systems. Her research focuses on developing and testing computer models to examine the extent to which complex natural phenomena are created by self-organization, as a side effect of the interaction between individuals and their social and physical environment. Her present focus is on predatory attacks on schools of fish and flocks of birds, in particular huge flocks of starlings. Her group’s models on bird flocks stand out in that they include simplified flying behaviour, those on fish schools in that they include fluid hydrodynamics. She is known for her counter-intuitive models on social systems of primates (and birds such as corvids) showing that very many aspects of their sophisticated social behaviour may arise from cognitively simple rules. After her PhD in primatology, before joining Groningen, she worked at the laboratory of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Zurich, where she conducted research on artificial social systems and she obtained her habilitation. She is past President of the Dutch Verenging for Theoretical Biology (NVTB), board-member of the Groningen Center for Social Complexity Studies (GCSCS)and on the Editorial Board for PloS One.

Plenary Address:  What Underlies Waves of Agitation in Starling Flocks?  (Hemelrijk Plenary Abstract)