This year’s symposium focuses on swarm intelligence and its impact in nature and society by focusing on two areas of research: honeybees and robots.

Swarm intelligence refers to problem solving that is accomplished collectively- by a group operating without centralized control. This type of decision making is not solely based in nature; it is also has human applications, such as allocating telecommunication traffic among servers or directing nanobots within a body to kill cancer.

This year’s presenters are Dr. Thomas Seeley of Cornell University. Seeley is a honeybee expert who will discuss how thousands of honeybees swarm together to collectively select a home site. Seeley will also talk about the lessons humans can learn form bee swarms such as fostering good decision making by democratic groups.

Dr. James McLurkin of University of Washington will discuss his research on robot swarms. McLurkin’s development of robot swarms has shown the presence of complex group behaviors from interactions of many simple individual robots. At the end of the symposium, McLurkin will release the robot swarm.

Dr. Allan Hook of St. Edward's University will discuss why some insect swarms exploit swarms of other insect species.

The symposium is free and open to the public.

About the Brother Lucian Blersch Symposium:
Organized by the School of Natural Sciences at St. Edward's University, the symposium honors Brother Lucian Blersch, CSC, a longtime professor of engineering at St. Edward ‘s who died in 1986 and in whose name a professorship in the School of Natural Sciences was endowed by a gift from J. B.N. Morris and his family.