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<p align="center"><span
style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Doctoral
position in Theoretical Biophysics </span></p>
<p align="center"><span
style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">(Deadline :
1st November 2025)</span></p>
<p
style="text-align:justify;background:white;font-variant-ligatures: normal;
font-variant-caps: normal;-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;text-decoration-thickness: initial;
text-decoration-style: initial;text-decoration-color: initial;word-spacing:
0px"><span
style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:black;mso-color-alt:
windowtext">We are seeking a doctoral student with a quantitative
background. Ideally, the candidate should have a master degree
in physics but other quantitative backgrounds will be
considered. The researcher will be based in the Integrative
Biophysics group at the University of Konstanz and Max Planck
Institute of Animal Behaviour, located in Konstanz, Germany.</span><span
style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"></span></p>
<p
style="text-align:justify;background:white;font-variant-ligatures: normal;
font-variant-caps: normal;-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;text-decoration-thickness: initial;
text-decoration-style: initial;text-decoration-color: initial;word-spacing:
0px"><span
style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:black;mso-color-alt:
windowtext">The <a
href="https://www.exc.uni-konstanz.de/collective-behaviour/about-us/people/integrative-biophysics-group/">Integrative
Biophysics group</a> is led by Dr. Ahmed El Hady. The group
focuses on a diverse set of theoretical biophysics problems. The
doctoral project is a collaboration between the integrative
biophysics research group and the research group of Prof. Ilya
Nemenman at Emory University, Altanta, US. The doctoral student
will have the opportunity to have research stays at Emory
University.</span><span
style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"></span></p>
<p
style="background:white;font-variant-ligatures: normal;font-variant-caps: normal;
-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;text-decoration-thickness: initial;text-decoration-style: initial;
text-decoration-color: initial;word-spacing:0px"><span
style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;
color:black;mso-color-alt:windowtext">The project summary is as follows:</span><span
style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"></span></p>
<p
style="background:white;font-variant-ligatures: normal;font-variant-caps: normal;
-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;text-decoration-thickness: initial;text-decoration-style: initial;
text-decoration-color: initial;word-spacing:0px"><span
style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;
color:black;mso-color-alt:windowtext"><b>Project Title</b>: <i>Inferring
dynamical interactions in social groups</i></span></p>
<p
style="background:white;font-variant-ligatures: normal;font-variant-caps: normal;
-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;text-decoration-thickness: initial;text-decoration-style: initial;
text-decoration-color: initial;word-spacing:0px"><span
style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;
color:black;mso-color-alt:windowtext"><br>
<b>Project Abstract</b>: Social interactions are one of the most
foundational building blocks of group behaviors, shaping
decision making strategies across ecologies. Social groups
consist of small number of individuals in contrast with
collectives that consist of large number of agents. Despite the
importance of social groups as a building block of living
systems, there is little understanding of mechanistic details of
the nature of those social interactions and how they shape
emergent social functional properties. This stands in contrast
with physics of collectives, which usually focus on the dynamics
of very large group of individuals and have been thoroughly
studied. In an experimental sys-tem or in field observations
tackling social behaviors, we do not know a priori the social
forces, nature of those interactions and their dynamics. Recent
advances in software and hardware allow us to track the behavior
of multiple individuals over extended spatio-temporal scales.
Thus it is crucial to develop methodologies to infer dynamical
social interactions and social forces from experimental
observations. This relates closely to work done inferring
"social forces" from dusty plasmas.</span><span
style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"></span></p>
<p
style="background:white;font-variant-ligatures: normal;font-variant-caps: normal;
-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;text-decoration-thickness: initial;text-decoration-style: initial;
text-decoration-color: initial;word-spacing:0px"><span
style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;
color:black;mso-color-alt:windowtext">Recent theoretical work has
developed an information theoretic approach to estimate
intrinsic motivation, based on maximizing an agent's empowerment
(defined as the mutual information between its past actions and
future states). This approach can be used to study social
behaviours, where individuals choose actions without an explicit
reward signal. In this project, we are planning to apply this
framework to infer and understand social behaviour of small
animal groups specifically locusts, mice and marmosets monkeys
offering not only a mechanistic insights into mechanisms of
social organization but also make quantitative evolutionary
comparison of social behaviours.</span><span
style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"></span></p>
<p
style="background:white;font-variant-ligatures: normal;font-variant-caps: normal;
-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;text-decoration-thickness: initial;text-decoration-style: initial;
text-decoration-color: initial;word-spacing:0px"><span
style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;
color:black;mso-color-alt:windowtext"><b>Relevant publications:</b></span><span
style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"></span></p>
<p
style="background:white;font-variant-ligatures: normal;font-variant-caps: normal;
-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;text-decoration-thickness: initial;text-decoration-style: initial;
text-decoration-color: initial;word-spacing:0px"><span
style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;
color:black;mso-color-alt:windowtext">1. Yu, Wentao, Eslam Abdelaleem,
Ilya Nemenman, and Justin C. Burton. "Physics-tailored machine
learning reveals unexpected physics in dusty plasmas.Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences 122, no. 31 (2025):
e2505725122.</span><span
style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"></span></p>
<p
style="background:white;font-variant-ligatures: normal;font-variant-caps: normal;
-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;text-decoration-thickness: initial;text-decoration-style: initial;
text-decoration-color: initial;word-spacing:0px"><span
style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;
color:black;mso-color-alt:windowtext"><br>
2. Tiomkin, Stas, Ilya Nemenman, Daniel Polani, and Naftali
Tishby. "Intrinsic motivation in dynamical control systems.” PRX
Life 2, no. 3 (2024): 033009.</span><span
style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"></span></p>
<p
style="background:white;font-variant-ligatures: normal;font-variant-caps: normal;
-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;text-decoration-thickness: initial;text-decoration-style: initial;
text-decoration-color: initial;word-spacing:0px"><span
style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;
color:black;mso-color-alt:windowtext">The doctoral position will be
embedded within the highly collaborative environment of the
cluster for advanced study of collective behavior at the
University of Konstanz. The expected starting date is 01/12/2025
and deadline for application is 01/11/2025. For more information
and application , please visit the website:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://stellen.uni-konstanz.de/jobposting/09992aa34cc8da9cb6416ec16df7ece31631c37a0">https://stellen.uni-konstanz.de/jobposting/09992aa34cc8da9cb6416ec16df7ece31631c37a0</a>
and the application portal is here:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://stellen.uni-konstanz.de/en/jobposting/09992aa34cc8da9cb6416ec16df7ece31631c37a0/apply">https://stellen.uni-konstanz.de/en/jobposting/09992aa34cc8da9cb6416ec16df7ece31631c37a0/apply</a></span><span
style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"></span></p>
<p
style="background:white;font-variant-ligatures: normal;font-variant-caps: normal;
-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;text-decoration-thickness: initial;text-decoration-style: initial;
text-decoration-color: initial;word-spacing:0px"><span
style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;
color:black;mso-color-alt:windowtext">If you have any questions or need
more information concerning the position, please contact Ahmed
El Hady on : <a
class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="mailto:ahmed.el-hady@uni-konstanz.de">ahmed.el-hady@uni-konstanz.de</a></span></p>
<p><br>
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