We are delighted to co-host a visit from Dr. Vishwanath Varma from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, Department of Collective Behavior. Vishwanath is currently a postdoc within the Department under Dr. Iain Couzin, and I met him during my sabbatical visit there last fall. In addition to comparing notes on locust research and modeling approaches for locust wave fronts, he also showed me an impressive experimental setup for his work and for others (e.g., the arena and Imaging Hangar where they once experimented with 10,000 locusts, the insect VR setup, robotic fish in a flow tank, and more). His visit might be of interest to those in EEB and in Math as well as affiliates of NIMBioS.

Colloquium Title: "Locust Swarming: Phase transitions in active matter systems"

Tentative Description: "Recent experiments at the Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour and Max Planck Institute of Animal Behaviour with thousands of locusts at different densities and environmental conditions reveal phase transitions between states of these collectives. We compare these insect swarms to active matter systems where individual movement decisions at local scales translate to global collective patterns."