Modeling collective behavior in hierarchically-organized systems

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Collective behavior is the organizing principle that has made existence anything more than a homogeneous expanse of mass and energy. Understanding how collective behavior emerges and operates is not only fascinating as a purely intellectual exercise, but compelling from an engineering perspective as well. In this talk I will describe how hierarchical structures arise naturally in systems that exhibit collective behavior, and describe two mathematical modeling projects aimed at giving a quantitative understanding of the building blocks of collective behavior in hierarchically organized systems.

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