Collective dynamics and self-organization

We are interested in large systems of agents collectively looking for a

consensus (about e.g. their direction of motion, like in bird flocks). In

spite of the local character of the interactions (only a few neighbours are

involved), these systems often exhibit large scale coordinated structures.

The understanding of how this self-organization emerges at the large scale

is still poorly understood and offer fascinating challenges to the modelling

science. We will discuss a few of these issues on a selection of specific

examples.