Hereafter is the list of the topics that will be discussed during this workshop:

• urban street patterns and urban area transportation
• foraging networks in animals
• optimality and constraints in transportation networks
• long distance air and maritime transportation
• spatial and planar networks

The following people will give a talk during this workshop:

• Thomas Courtat (Orange, France)
• Marc Barthélemy (Cea, Saclay, France)
• César Ducruet (Géographie-Cités, Paris, France)
• Mark Fricker (University of Oxford, UK)
• Michael Gastner (Imperial College, London, UK)
• Jacques Gautrais (CRCA Toulouse, France)
• Luke Heaton (Oxford)
• Christian Jost (CRCA Toulouse, France)
• Vito Latora (Università di Catania, Italy)
• Igor Lugo (postdoc, Géographie-Cités)
• Emanuele Strano (UDSU, Strathclyde Univesirsity, UK)

Registration to the workshop is free but mandatory, as the workshop attendance is limited. Details on registration and contributed talks can be found on http://iscpif.fr./tnnt2010.

During swarm robotics meetings, one can encounter computer scientists, mathematicians, roboticists or engineers. But it is less common to find a biologist in such events. Yet, swarm robotics has largely developed from biological discoveries that have been made during the last thirty years about the organization of animal societies. One reason that explains the defection of biologists is the difficulty they have to find relevant information for their own work in this new research field. They consider robots as "cool" gadgets, but not as tools able to make progress in the study of social behaviors.

In this seminar, I will review some of the ways swarm robotics can contribute to the study of collective animal behavior. I argue that robotics and affiliated disciplines can bring significant improvements in this biological field, from a technical, conceptual and pedagogical point of view. I will build my discussion on top of five observations I have made while collaborating as a biologist with computer scientists and roboticists: robots require a complete specification; robots are physical entities; robots implement new technologies; robots can be inadvertent sources of biological inspiration; and robots are indeed "cool" gadgets."

More information about the location of the lecture can be found here: http://www.stevens.edu/ses/about_soe/events/rss/index.php.

• Submission Deadline: Oct 31, 2010
• Notification Due: Dec 15, 2010
• Final Version Due: Jan 15, 2011

More information about invited speakers, registration and poster submission can be found in the flyer of the workshop or on the dedicated website (not working yet).

Systems biology aims at understanding how biological systems operate at various scales, by studying the interactions between the individual constituents (genes, proteins, cells, organisms). At each of these organisational levels, the degree of complexity is such that information cannot be processed and integrated on a purely intuitive basis. For this reason, mathematical models play an increasingly important role. Such models must be elaborated on the bases of biological data and validated at both the elementary constituent and the global structure scales. Nowadays, the development of statistical analysis and mathematical modeling tools leads to the possibility of 'in silico' simulations of the various processes which underlie the operation of the biological systems at the various scales.

The use of these methods and the new investigation areas that they open are constantly growing. The goal of this workshop is to gather experts of this new interdisciplinary research field in an attempt to draw a sketch of the state-of-the-art and to spread the methodologies to a wide community of researchers.

The workshop will consist of plenary talks of 45 minutes each plus 15 minutes for questions. The schedule will leave time slots for discussions and interactions among the participants. The participation to the workshop is free of charge, but registration in mandatory.

The workshop will be followed by a one-day companion workshop, 'Mathematics of Complex Systems', on Thursday June 10, 2010.

All necessary information to attend the workshop are available at this address: http://sites.google.com/site/mibs3toulouse/workshops.

Start date: Mid-October 2010 or sooner

A postdoctoral position is available in the Collective Animal Behavior Laboratory at Princeton University to study collective information processing using schooling fish as a model system. This is part of a multidisciplinary investigation of decision-making by animal groups. Specifically we aim to explore the interplay between individual heterogeneity, spatial organization, and collective decision-making dynamics.

While a comprehension of modeling techniques may be useful this is first and foremost an experimental position and as such you must have experience of working with animals (ideally, but not essentially, with fish). The CouzinLab is a highly inter-disciplinary environment with an integrated research program involving automated tracking, computational modeling and controlled experimentation. See http://www.princeton.edu/~icouzin for further details.

You will be a team-player to capitalize on these technologies and collaborative possibilities with a passion for biology and the capability to provide leadership in our experimental research program.

To apply, please send a CV and a statement of research interests to Prof. Iain D. Couzin at icouzin@princeton.edu with "Schooling" in the subject line.

Princeton University is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer and particularly welcomes nominations of women and members of underrepresented minority groups.

- Collective Behavior and Information Transfer in Human Crowds -

Starting Date: Ideally as soon as possible

A two year postdoctoral position is available in collective behavior of human crowds in the CouzinLab at Princeton University. This is part of an ongoing project for the UK Home Office in collaboration with Oxford Risk, a University of Oxford spinout company, and will involve analysis of kinematic data sets from pedestrian crowds as well as the development and validation of individual-based models of the motion and behavior of people in urban environments. Strong programming skills are essential and comprehension of computer vision techniques would be beneficial (although expert knowledge in this area is not required).

You will be integrated within a highly multi-disciplinary research environment and should be enthusiastic, motivated with good interpersonal skills. The position will be based in Princeton but you must be able to travel to the UK periodically to undertake experiments and for meetings with the Oxford Risk team.

Please see the links below for further information about the CouzinLab and Oxford Risk:

• http://www.princeton.edu/~icouzin
• http://www.oxfordrisk.com/

To apply, please send a CV and a statement of research interests to Prof. Iain D. Couzin at icouzin@princeton.edu with "Crowds" in the subject line.

Princeton University is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer and particularly welcomes nominations of women and members of underrepresented minority groups.

The SIMAI congress will held in Cagliari (Italy), from June 21st to June 25th 2010. The exact date of the symposium during this period is not yet decided. Expected speakers are:

• José Alfredo Cañizo (Department of Mathematics, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain): Mean-field limit for collective behavior models with noise.
• Emiliano Cristiani (CEMSAC – Università di Salerno and IAC-CNR, Roma, Italy): A multiscale approach for pedestrian flow.
• Jesú Rosado (Department of Mathematics, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain): A refined result of flocking for the Cucker-Smale model.
• Juliette Venel (Department of Mathematics, Université de Valenciennes et du Hainaut-Cambrésis, France): A discrete contact model for crowd motion.
• Fiammetta Venuti (Department of Structural and Geotechnical Engineering, Politecnico di Torino, Italy): Crowd-structure interaction on footbridges, modelling of the coupled system and an application.
• And me, Simon Garnier (Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, USA): Trail geometry encodes heuristic information in the Argentine ant.

Position: Computer Scientist in Spatial Analysis and Data Integration
Location: IRD Reunion Island, France
Duration: 17 months from June 2010 to December 2011
Deadline: 31st of May 2010
Salary Range: ~ 3000€ by month

IRD (Institute for Reasearch and Development) is seeking for a young scientific researcher (PhD) with strong quantitative analytical skills and good knowledge in spatial analyses including experience in data modelling (developed mathematical approaches by stochastic differential equations or individual-based models) and programming (R, Splus, C++ or Matlab). You should possess good interactive web development skills to manage databases using JavaScript (AJAX) and PHP/Python in an Apache/Linux environment. Knowledge in marine biology and telemetry are suitable. You will work on electronic tagging data coming from experiments dedicated to the understanding of gregarious fish behaviours under FADs (Fish Aggregating Device). Spatial data with high resolution acquired by different telemetry methods are already available. You will contribute to purchase and consolidate the analyses by confront field data to model outputs. You should have to participate to tagging experiment in the open-field. You need good verbal and written presentation and communication skills in English, good working knowledge of Word and Excel and databases and proven ability to work as part of an interdisciplinary team.

For additional information and proposal, please contact:
Dr M. Soria, Research engineer
Tel: 00 262 (0) 262 29 93 42
Email: marc.soria@ird.fr

Call for papers is available here along with a summary of the objectives of this workshop. In short, 

This half-day workshop aims to bring together new theories and methodologies inspired by biological principles for self-organizing robotic systems. The emphasis of the workshop is on bridging multi-disciplinary research areas such as robotics, artificial life, systems biology, and evolutionary computation. Topics of this workshop include, but are not limited to:

• Morphogenetic approaches to self-organizing multi-robot systems
• Morphogenetic approaches to modular robots
• Evolutionary and developmental approaches to design of robot body-plan and controller
• Self-organized multi-robot pattern formation and boundary coverage
• Stigmergy in self-organized collective construction
• Swarm intelligence based approaches to multi-robot systems
• Unified approaches to self-assembling swarm and modular robots
• Evolutionary multi-robot organism
• Robustness, self-reparability and evolvability of self-organizing multi-robot systems

Important dates to remember are:

• Submission deadline: February 25, 2010
• Author notification: March 6, 2010
• Final version due: March 12, 2010
• Workshop: May 3, 2010

By the way, I'm giving a talk there. 

The first day of the meeting is a postgraduate workshop with short talks by invited speakers, focusing on topics of great interest for researchers in the early stages of their career. The second and third days are the Easter meeting. There will be post graduate talks, poster presentations, social events, and plenary lectures by Prof. Jane Hurst and Prof. Jens Krause as well as the presentation by Dr Andy Gardner, the 2010 winner of the ASAB Outstanding Young Investigator Award.

All information can be found at the following address: http://psychology.exeter.ac.uk/asabeaster2010/ASAB%20Easter%20Meeting%202010.html. 

Important dates for this event are:

• Deadline for abstract submission: February 28, 2010
• Registration closes: March 10, 2010