Bryan Daniels

I investigate collective phenomena by integrating empirical data with concepts and methods from statistical physics, dynamical systems, and model selection. Working closely with broad-minded collaborators — willing and excited by the prospect of exploring new ideas and solving hard problems — I seek to make novel contributions to the study of complex, collective systems. I am currently a research assistant professor in the ASU–SFI Center for Biosocial Complex Systems, a joint project between Arizona State University and the Santa Fe Institute. My intellectual trajectory started in physics as an undergraduate at Ohio Wesleyan University, moved toward nonlinear dynamics, quantitative biology, and statistical physics as a graduate student at Cornell University, and has been pulled further into the domain of complex systems science as a postdoc at the Santa Fe Institute and the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery. Nowadays I find myself working on the discovery of parsimonious explanations of collective adaptive behavior in many realms, including social behavior, cellular biology, and neuroscience.