Seminar series: W MathBio!

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Publié le 28 avril 2026 – Mis à jour le 23 juin 2026
Date(s)

le 29 juin 2026

11am
Lieu(x)
Zoom

The next W MathBio! seminar will be led by Gissell Estrada-Rodriguez from the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya exploring Decision making in heterogeneous self-propelled particle systems.

  • Summary: We investigate the role of uninformed individuals in consensus formation within opinion-swarming models for self-propelled particles, inspired by empirical observations of collective behaviour in animal groups such as schooling fish. We introduce a coupled framework in which each individual is described by its position, velocity, and a continuous opinion variable, and interacts through self-propulsion, alignment, attraction-repulsion forces, and opinion-based mechanisms. Building on bounded-confidence models, we distinguish between leaders, followers, and uninformed individuals in a three-population setting. Our results show that uninformed individuals, despite having no intrinsic opinion bias, can strongly shape collective dynamics by weakening leader influence and promoting more democratic decision-making. Numerical simulations reveal a range of emergent behaviours, including flocking and milling, and provide insight into the interplay between leadership, opinion consensus, and spatial self-organisation in heterogeneous crowds.
  • Where: on Zoom link for the seminar is available here
The replay of previous seminars is available on the W MathBio YouTube channel