Collective dynamics and pattern formation in systems of communicating cells: Theory and Simulations

How a system of genetically identical biological cells organizes into spatially heterogeneous tissues is a central question in biology. Even when the molecular and genetic underpinnings of cell-cell interactions are known, how these lead to multicellular patterns is often poorly understood. Of particular interest are dynamic patterns such as...

Coupling of genotype-phenotype maps to noise-driven adaptation, showcased in yeast polarity

One of the biggest scientific challenges to be tackled this century is how traits of living organisms originate from genes, the so-called genotype-phenotype map, and conversely how traits influence genes through a process called evolution. The solution will yield a large societal impact, with applications in food (e.g., engineering drought...

Self-organizing energy-autonomous systems

With the rapid development of mobile technology, more and more devices connect to the Internet of Things (IoT). The management of such large-scale networks becomes a challenge. Firstly, a large number of heterogeneous devices are distributed over a wide area, leading to a variation of the requirements of users, the performance of mobile devices,...

Multi-level Reconfigurable Self-organization in Overlay Services

Large-scale decentralized systems organized in overlay networks are complex to manage. Such systems integrate organizational complexity in the application-level resulting in low abstraction and modularity in their services. This thesis introduces a multi-level conceptual architecture for overlay services. An overlay service is a large-scale...

Mechanisms for Self-organizing Ad Hoc Grids

Resources contributed in ad hoc grids are volatile, unreliable and non-dedicated. Furthermore, resource owners contribute resources according to their own use and access policies. This phenomenon necessitates the study of the mechanisms that enable the ad hoc grid to modify its infrastructure in an autonomous way according to varying resource...

Thermodynamic explorations into sustainable energy conversion: Learning from living systems

Personal networks: An architecture for self-organized personal wireless communications

Understanding open source communities: An organizational perspective

Open source communities are groups of sometimes hundreds if not thousands of individuals with different interests, backgrounds and motives. Many participants are volunteers, who are not paid to take part in the communities. Furthermore, many never get to meet each other in real life. They meet virtually, on the Internet. Yet they are able to...

MEDUSA: Survivable information security in critical infrastructures