Ricerc@Sapienza

The Cobbs group - www.cobbs.it -  is a joint Sapienza-CNR lab devoted to the study of collective pheomena in biological systems. It was founded in 2005 by Irene Giardina (Department of Physics, Sapienza) and Andrea Cavagna (Institute for Complex Systems, CNR), and it has been the first lab to collect 3D large-scale experimental data in the field on flocking and swarming behaviour, and to build theory starting directly from the data.

Our group applies a statistical physics approach to understand how collective behaviour emerges in animal groups and – more broadly – in biological systems. Our aim is to provide empirical basis and to theoretically develop a statistical physics of living matter, up to the behavioural scale. The COBBS group uses experiments in the field and in the lab, computer vision and imaging techniques, numerical modelling and field theory approaches to investigate collective and response behaviour, scaling and universality in a variety of living systems at the micro and macro scale (cells, flocks and swarms).