Iain Couzin

Iain Couzin is Director of the Department of Collective Behaviour (Max Planck Institute of Animal Behaviour) and a Full Professor at the University of Konstanz, where he is also a spokesperson of the Cluster of Excellence ‘Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour’. Previously he was a Full Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University (2013), and prior to that a Royal Society University Research Fellow in the Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, and a Junior Research Fellow in the Sciences at Balliol College, Oxford (2002-2007).

His work aims to reveal the fundamental principles that underlie evolved collective behaviour, and consequently his research includes the study of a wide range of biological systems, from insect swarms to fish schools and primate groups. In recognition of his research he has been recipient of the Searle Scholar Award in 2008; top 5 most cited papers of the decade in animal behaviour research 1999-2010; the Mohammed Dahleh Award in 2009; Popular Science’s “Brilliant 10” Award in 2010; National Geographic Emerging Explorer Award in 2012; the Scientific Medal of the Zoological Society of London in 2013; a Web of Science Global Highly Cited Researcher in all years from 2018 to 2022 and 2024; the Lagrange Prize “the first, and most important, international recognition in the field of complexity science” in 2019; and Germany’s highest research honour, the Leibniz Prize, in 2022.