By Alaina O'Regan and the American Academy in Rome
April 9, 2025
Naomi Ehrich Leonard, a leader in control and dynamical systems, will share her research at the American Academy in Rome from April 14-17 as part of their second annual Galileo Week, a public program of lectures and events bridging the arts, sciences and humanities.
Leonard, the Edwin S. Wiley Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and chair of the department, develops mathematical theory to study the emergent collective decision-making of animal groups like flocks of birds and schools of fish, and to explore feedback and dynamics for applications in robotics and mobile sensor networks, as well as in dance, music, and kinetic sculpture. Leonard will provide the Galileo Week keynote lecture, display a three-day exhibition of her collaborative Rhythm Bots installation, and engage in a panel discussion as part of a short-term residency with the academy.
The American Academy in Rome is a leading American overseas center for independent studies and advanced research in the fine arts and humanities, according to their website. It was established in 1894 to enable highly motivated scholars and artists to immerse themselves in the experience of Rome and to be inspired by daily exchange with other members of the creative community.
Galileo Week is free and open to the public. The program will be held in English and livestreamed.
April 14 – Keynote Lecture: The Art and Science of Collective Decision-Making
Leonard will discuss her theories of how complex collective behaviors emerge from the relatively simple choices made by individual animals in response to their neighbors and environment. She will show how the theory can be harnessed in science and art, such as for environmental monitoring with robotic teams and for rule-based improvisational dance. She will discuss how her design and art-making experiments inform the science that motivated them. View the livestream here on April 14 at 12pm ET.
April 16 – Artist Conversation: Modeling Collective Decision-Making
Building on her studies of how flocks, schools and swarms move and her model of collective decision-making, Leonard will be in conversation with composer Alvin Curran and poet Erica Hunt about how group decisions are taken in a creative and collaborative setting. View the livestream here on April 16 at 12pm ET.
April 14-17 – Rhythm Bots
Leonard will present an immersive installation with video, sound and virtual reality evoking her most recent experiment, Rhythm Bots, a playground for human-robot interaction in which a group of gentle, rhythmically rotating robots synchronize their movement in response to one another and their audience. Video interviews reveal how a group of scientists, scholars, and artists collaborated to create Rhythm Bots.
Leonard, who is also the founder of Princeton’s interdisciplinary consortium creativeX, said the project provides an inspiring avenue for her investigations into how collective behaviors emerge in a group of individuals. Learn more about Rhythm Bots here.