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 information technology and robotics, the European Research Council (ERC) awarded a $2.9-million ERC Advanced Grant Tuesday to Marco Dorigo to help the research director for the Belgian Funds for Scientific Research (FNRS) and co-director of IRIDIA (the Free University of Brussels's artificial intelligence lab) further his work engineering swarm intelligence systems.

Congratulations Marco for this great opportunity you have now to push further away the development of new paradigms and applications. This official recognition by the European authorities of the potential of Swarm Intelligence is a good news for the field and a strong encouragement for new research project on this topic. I just hope that the ERC will not forget research on natural/biological Swarm Intelligence in future project calls.