John H. Long, Jr. of Vassar College

Abstract - The work of a biologist is hard for a simple reason:  life forms are complex. While the analytic approach of reducing the whole to its parts has yielded incredible advances in our understanding of neurobiology, physiology, and genomics, challenges remain in constructing a theory of the operational organism. How do sensors, brains, and muscles co-operate to allow animals to behave autonomously?  What role does the physical interaction of an animal and its world play in goal-directed behavior?  How do bodies and brains evolve when natural selection acts on behavior?  These questions are being addressed by biologists, engineers, and computer scientists collaborating to build behaviorally autonomous biorobots, individual-based models of animals rendered in digital and physical form.  As simplified models of complex living systems, biorobots are built to embody functional principles that we think are operating in animals as they behave and as they evolve.  We run experiments on the biorobots, a method that provides a quantitative modeling approach to test our understanding of the complexities of life’s devices.

Biography:

John H. Long, Jr. is Professor of Biology and Cognitive Science at Vassar College, where he also serves as the co-Director of the Interdisciplinary Robotics Research Laboratory, which he helped create in 2005.  He recently worked for a year at the National Science Foundation, serving as a Program Director in Physiological Mechanisms and Biomechanics, part of the Directorate of Biological Science’s division of Integrative Organismal Systems. Collaborating with engineers and computer scientists, John builds biorobots in order to test ideas about how animals work and evolve. Using robotic models to study biology is a scientific approach that he introduced to a popular science audience in his book, Darwin’s Devices: What Evolving Robots Can Teach Us About the History of Life and the Future of Technology.  You can also find John teaching the basics of mobile, autonomous robotics in the Great Courses’ series, “Robotics.”

Address:Vassar College, , Poughkeepsie, New York, United States