Roman Shvydkoy, University of Illinois, Chicago, Analytical perspectives on the emergence phenomena in systems of collective behavior
Systems governed by laws of self-organization arise in many different contexts including biology (swarming behavior of animals), social (opinion dynamics, social networks), technological (cosmology, control, robotics), and others. A particular challenge in studying such systems is to understand how local communication between "agents" gives rise to emergence of global collective behavior characterized by two basic phenomena -- alignment and flocking. In this…