- Ph.D., Case Western Reserve University, 1989
Randall D. Beer
Provost Professor, Cognitive Science
Provost Professor, School of Informatics and Computing
Provost Professor, Cognitive Science
Provost Professor, School of Informatics and Computing
My primary research interest is in understanding how coordinated behavior arises from the dynamical interaction of an animal's nervous system, its body and its environment. Toward this end, I work on the evolution and analysis of dynamical "nervous systems" for model agents, neuromechanical modeling of animals, biologically-inspired robotics, and dynamical systems approaches to behavior and cognition. More generally, I am interested in computational and theoretical biology, including models of metabolism, gene regulation and development. I also have a longstanding interest in the design and implementation of dynamic programming languages and their programming environments.