Scientific American recently revealed that the European Research Council (ERC) awarded Marco Dorigo's lab with €2 millions (~$2.9 millions) to further develop his research on Swarm Intelligence. The journal article, "Group Thinker: Researcher Gets $2.9 Million to Further Develop Swarm Intelligence", states:

With an eye on the potential that swarm intelligence holds for the development of [...]

Iain Couzin, Professor at the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University and specialist of collective behaviours, recently answered to this interview on the website BigThink.com. The interview mixes questions about human crowds, locust plague, video games and more. The interview is available here, or can be seen below:

The next ANTS conference on Swarm Intelligence has been scheduled on September 8-10, 2010. As usual, it will be held in Brussels (Belgium) and will be chaired by Professor Marco Dorigo (IRIDIA, Université Libre de Bruxelles). All information can be found on the website of the conference: http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/ants2010/. 

Important dates to remember: 

Submission deadline: February 28, 2010

Notification of [...]

The very recent journal Topics in Cognitive Science has released in its last issue (volume 1, number 3) and in the next one (volume 1, number 4, not online) a series of articles on collective behaviors. This special issue has been handled by the Associate Editors Robert Goldstone and Todd Gureckis and aimed at the coverage of [...]

I found at hulu.com this documentary film about E. O. Wilson, the very famous ant specialist. This film was produced by Nova, a tv-show from PBS channel, and can be found in different qualities and format at this webpage. Unfortunately, it is only viewable from inside the US, due to copyright restrictions. Hopefully this restriction [...]

Update: here is the link to the website of the workshop http://cognition.ups-tlse.fr/fintha/index.html.
From September 23 to September 25, 2009, will hold in the European Centre for Living Technologies in Venice (Italy) a workshop dedicated to the "Engineering principles of innovation in swarm-made architectures". 
The aim of the workshop is to address some of the fundamental issues related to the construction and [...]

Update: Extension of the submission deadline to May 15, 2009.
Dr. Nikolaus Correll from the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the MIT informed me today about the forthcoming deadline of a special issue on swarm intelligence and swarm robotics. This special issue will be published early 2010 in the journal Neural Computing & Applications. 
This special [...]

 
Important Dates

Paper submission deadline 1 June 2009
Notice of acceptance 12 June 2009
Camera ready deadline 3 July 2009
Workshop date 29 July 2009

Overview
"Swarm Cognition" is the juxtaposition of two relatively unrelated concepts that evoke, on the one hand, the power of collective behaviours displayed by natural swarms, and on the other hand the complexity of [...]

Je suis inquiet, très, très inquiet…, par C.M. Vadrot 

"Vendredi dernier, à titre de solidarité avec mes collègues enseignants de l’Université de Paris 8 engagés, en tant que titulaires et chercheurs de l’Education Nationale, dans une opposition difficile à Valérie Pécresse, j’ai décidé de tenir mon cours sur la biodiversité et l’origine de la protection des [...]

Following the seminar given by Irene Giardina on Thursday, April 2, Professor Andrea Cavagna will speak next Monday (April 6) about a quantitative field study of flocking in starlings (STARFLAG project). The seminar will stand at Princeton University, Joseph Henry Room, Jadwin Hall, from 12:15pm to 1:15pm. Hereafter is a summary of the talk:

 
Bird flocking [...]