Sunday, February 27, 2011

Terrific Media Coverage of the Collective Behavior Symposium at AAAS

My brain is still percolating from all the interesting talks that I attended and people that I met at the AAAS Annual Meeting that took place recently in Washington DC.

I also very much appreciate the excellent coverage of the science at this terrific meeting by the media since it is very important to get the news about exciting and important research out!

The Mathematics and Collective Behavior Symposium at the AAAS Meeting was truly enjoyable to be part of. As for media coverage, an article in Science News, entitled, "Model Copes with Chaos to Deliver Disaster Relief, " discusses our research on the design of supply chains for critical needs products from vaccines and medicines to humanitarian relief supplies as well as our research on the management of perishable, life-saving products as in the case of blood supply chains. It also mentions the work of Iain Couzin, who was a fellow panelist of mine at this symposium. Iain and I first met when we were panelists on the Traffic: From Insects to Interstates panel at the World Science Festival in NYC in June 2009 and we had a fabulous time at that event, as well.

The Economist, in its latest issue, also has coverage of Collective Behaviour (British spelling) in a report on Couzin's research in the article: Follow my leader: A group’s “intelligence” depends in part on its members’ ignorance. The article has a gorgeous photo of fish swimming, since that is one type of animal that his research focuses on, but his movies of animals moving and migrating are truly something to behold.