Title: Chase-and-run: from playgrounds to the developing embryo 

Abstract:  For hundreds of years, playgrounds have played host to games of “chase” or “tag”, in which one or more of the children try to catch the others. Such chase-and-run phenomena occur across biology, from animal (e.g. predators and their prey) to cell populations (e.g. neural crest and placode cells). Using a nonlocal aggregation model framework, I will explore the different self-organising behaviours that can emerge such interactions, where phenomena range from stationary patterns to oscillating dynamics to a sustained chase-and-run at the population level (one group chasing another group). To explore the key drivers of this behaviour I will focus on the interaction ranges - the distances over which populations interact with each other - showing that distinct interaction ranges strongly determine the form of macroscopic behaviour that emerges. The results will be discussed in terms of robust collective migration of cellular populations during embryonic development. 

About the speaker: https://sites.google.com/view/kevinjpainter/home

Video of the talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoavGEmDOjE