Connectionists: Doctoral Position in Theoretical Biophysics at Center for Advanced Study of Collective Behavior

[Ahmed El Hady]

Doctoral position in Theoretical Biophysics

(Deadline : 1st November 2025)

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.

The Integrative Biophysics group 
<https://www.exc.uni-konstanz.de/collective-behaviour/about-us/people/integrative-biophysics-group/> 
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.

The project summary is as follows:

*Project Title*: /Inferring dynamical interactions in social groups/


*Project Abstract*: 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.

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.

*Relevant publications:*

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.


2. Tiomkin, Stas, Ilya Nemenman, Daniel Polani, and Naftali Tishby. 
"Intrinsic motivation in dynamical control systems.” PRX Life 2, no. 3 
(2024): 033009.

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: 
https://stellen.uni-konstanz.de/jobposting/09992aa34cc8da9cb6416ec16df7ece31631c37a0 
and the application portal is here: 
https://stellen.uni-konstanz.de/en/jobposting/09992aa34cc8da9cb6416ec16df7ece31631c37a0/apply

If you have any questions or need more information concerning the 
position, please contact Ahmed El Hady on : ahmed.el-hady at uni-konstanz.de

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