Simon Garnier

Simon Garnier is a Professor in the Biological Sciences department at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT). His research focuses on collective behavior in biological systems, including army ants, ants' self-organizing structures, and the application of swarm intelligence principles to robotics and engineering. He has led multiple NSF-funded projects exploring topics such as self-assembling robots inspired by army ants and the regulation of mass behaviors in social systems.

• Grants & Projects:
• NSF Convergence Accelerator Track M (2024-2025): Slime Mold Inspired Self-Assembling Conveyor System for Flood Response
• NSF UROL:EN (2022-2027): Emergent Energetic Regulation in Dynamic Biological Networks
• NSF Collaborative Research (2017-2024): Living Architectures from Army Ants to Robots

Research Interests: Collective decision-making, self-organization, swarm robotics, and the interface between biological systems and engineered solutions. Recent work includes developing biobots from human cells and analyzing social contagion dynamics in ant colonies.

Publications: Over 57 peer-reviewed articles, including high-impact studies on ant transport mechanisms, R package development for collective motion analysis (swaRmverse), and the creation of biobots from human progenitor cells.

Labs/Teams: Leads interdisciplinary teams integrating biology, robotics, and computer science to advance understanding of collective systems and their applications in disaster response and medical engineering.