معرفی
Eric Warrant is a Professor and Head of the Division of Sensory Biology at Lund University, Sweden, where he leads the Lund Vision Group. He is also affiliated with the eSSENCE: The e-Science Collaboration and the LU Profile Area: Natural and Artificial Cognition. His research focuses on the visual systems of nocturnal insects and deep-sea animals, with major contributions to understanding insect vision, navigation, and bio-inspired technologies.
- PhD, Australian National University (1990)
- BSc (Hons), University of New South Wales (1985)
His research interests center on insect vision, nocturnal vision, visual ecology, and animal navigation, particularly how insects like dung beetles, moths, and bees use celestial cues, magnetic fields, and optic flow to orient themselves in darkness. His work bridges biology, physics, and engineering, leading to bio-inspired computer vision algorithms developed in collaboration with Toyota.
Recent publications highlight trends in biomimetic navigation systems, insect migration monitoring using lidar, and deep learning models for celestial orientation. His studies often integrate fieldwork in Australia and Sweden with advanced imaging and neural analysis techniques.
- IgNobel Prize (2013) for celestial navigation in dung beetles
- President of the International Society of Neuroethology (2018)
- Fellow of the Royal Institute of Navigation (2022)
- Member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina (2023)
- Corresponding Member of The Australian Academy of Science (2024)
- President of the Royal Physiographic Society of Lund (2025)
- Corresponding Member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters
Eric Warrant has supervised several PhD students, including Marie Dacke, and leads major research projects such as Finding the way in the dark (Swedish Research Council) and bio-inspired AI projects with eSSENCE. He has also organized the International Conferences of Invertebrate Vision and the international PhD course Sensory Ecology. He is a key figure in interdisciplinary research connecting natural and artificial cognition.
He is actively involved in the Lund Vision Group and oversees research in sensory biology, with labs in both Lund and the Australian Alps, where he conducts fieldwork on the Bogong moth migration. His team explores how genetic programming enables long-distance navigation in insects.
