In this episode I meet Dr. Eliseo Ferrante, formerly at the University of Leuven, currently researcher at the Université de Technologie de Compiègne, who studies self-organization and evolution. His academic page here. As we were digging into the details of his research, some analogies with data science and data analytics got my attention. As always, some interesting articles and media coverage are reported below.

Enjoy the show to find out more!

Interesting read
E. Ferrante, A.E. Turgut, E. Duéñez-Guzmán, M. Dorigo, and T. Wenseleers. Evolution of self-organized task specialization in robot swarms. PLOS Computational Biology, 11(8):e1004273, 2015.

http://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004273

C. Huepe, E. Ferrante, T. Wenseleers, and A. E. Turgut. Scale-free correlations in flocking systems with position-based interactions.Journal of Statistical Physics, 158(3):549–562, 2014.
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10955-014-1114-8

E. Ferrante, A. E. Turgut, M. Dorigo, and C. Huepe. Elasticity-based mechanism for the collective motion of self-propelled particles with spring-like interactions: A model system for natural and artificial swarms. Physical Review Letters, 111(268302):1–5, 2013.
http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.111.268302

M. Brambilla, E. Ferrante, M. Birattari, and M. Dorigo. Swarm robotics: A review from the swarm engineering perspective. Swarm Intelligence, 7:1–41, 2013.
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11721-012-0075-2

 
Media coverage

Ant-like robots might help explain origins of cooperation
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/08/antlike-robots-might-help-explain-origins-cooperation

Robots Discover How Cooperative Behavior Evolved in Insects