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 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@uni-konstanz.de