Retreats

CASCB Fall Retreat 2023

The retreat, which took place in a unique location, the Lochmühle theme park close to Lake Constance, focused on the cluster reapplication process. Several cluster researchers interested in contributing to the reapplication came together to discuss possible future topics, brainstorm ideas, and get the writing process going. We felt that the participants understood the urgency and left the retreat inspired to draft the first pages for our cluster’s reapplication.

CASCB Spring Retreat 2023

The Spring Retreat was a community-driven, low-threshold event to facilitate scientific exchange and interpersonal connections. The two-day retreat started off with a presentation of the mid-term evaluation and a seminar by Eli Strauss. This was followed by several poster sessions, where CASCB community members contributed a poster on their research and presented it in a 5-minute pitch. The retreat ended with the General Assembly Meeting, at which an addition to the cluster bylaws was adopted, the granting of voting rights to the cluster’s PhD representatives.

CASCB Fall Retreat 2022

The CASCB held its second retreat of the year on 11-13 October at the beautiful lakeside venue of Schloss Marbach. Firstly, this retreat marked the moment of being able to get together again in person, hence the effort put into selecting a truly beautiful and inspiring location. Secondly, it marked another milestone in that one of the tasks was to take a first look into the future and the research directions the cluster might put forward in its upcoming renewal application to the German Research Foundation, which is to be submitted in 2024. The prospect of setting the course for the future also gave rise to the need to reflect on the status of implementation towards the original cluster goals and the lessons learned since 2019.

With an impressive set of goals and 100 participants in total as the baseline, the autumn retreat could not have set off in a more exciting and promising way.
Three cluster newcomers and one visiting member of the CASCB Scientific Advisory Board gave very interesting plenary talks on:

• The bonobo behavioural ecology project and its intersection with the CASCB (Professor Barbara Fruth, CASCB/Max Planck Institute of Animal Behaviour)
• Decision-making, human-swarm interaction, minimize surprise (Professor Heiko Hamann, CASCB/Uni Konstanz)
• Perception of energy, uncertainty, and the integration of options in movement decisions (Dr Hannah Williams, CASCB/Max Planck Institute of Animal Behaviour)
• The quest for a biological concept of beauty (Professor Leonida Fusani, Konrad Lorenz Institute of Ethology, University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna/Department of Behavioural and Cognitive Biology, University of Vienna)

CASCB Spring Retreat 2022

The CASCB held its first retreat of 2022 on campus at the VCC Data Theatre on 4-6 April. The focus was on providing the cluster community with ample opportunity to meet in person, discuss and present ideas, and re-connect after a period of extensive social hiatus due to COVID-19.

As a special treat, two members of the CASCB Scientific Advisory Board, Karl Sigmund from the University of Vienna and Jutta Schneider from the University of Hamburg, joined the retreat and delighted us with inspiring plenary presentations. Two more plenary talks were held by Armin Bahl and Andrea Flack, and further food for scientific discussion was provided in the form of posters, talks, and workshops.

Video Recordings

• Armin Bahl: The neural basis of zebrafish decision-making: From individuals to collectives
• Karl Sigmund: Adaptive dynamics of signaling games
• Andrea Flack: Understanding collective migrations: From individual movements to migratory culture

CASCB Spring Retreat 2021

As a general motto, talks were invited by early career researchers alone, preferably by those who have been working on one of the original 13 starting or other cluster projects. Newcomers to the cluster were, or course, warmly welcome too. The program for the week included 29 short presentations plus one speaker´s plenary session on day one on CASCB´s vision and research landscape.

We keep a theme for each day´s presentation session, including „Signalling, social behavior and herd movement“ (Day 1), „Stress, brains and decision-making“ (Day 2), „Eat, learn, innovate, migrate“ (Day 3), „VR and Collective Sensing“ (Day 4), and „Measuring, analysing, visualising and modelling collective behaviour“ (Day 5).

CASCB Fall Retreat 2019

The first retreat of the Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour took place in October 2019.