See also: Professor Beer's homepage
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.
Bold student names indicate a cognitive science standalone student.
| Author | Dissertation Title | Committee |
| Brady, Michael | A Field-Based Artificial Neural Network w/ Cerebella Model for Complex Motor Sequence Learning (May 2012) | Beer, R. (Chair), Kewley-Port, D., Port, R., Bingham, G. |
| Kadihasanoglu, Didem | An Evolutionary Robotics Approach to Visually-Guided Braking: Data and Theory (October 2012) | Beer, R. (Chair), Bingham, G., Busey, T., Yu, C. |
| Williams, Paul | Information Dynamics: Its Theory and Application to Embodied Cognitive Systems (May 2011) | Beer, R (Chair)., Beggs, J., Olaf, S., Yaeger, L. |
| Zednik, Carlos | Mechanistic Explanation and Dynamical Cognitive Science (August 2011) | Allen, C (Chair)., Beer, R., Weinberg, J., Chemero, A. |
| Sheya, Adam | Coordinating Location and Object Properties in Goal-Directed Action: A Case of Self-Generated Developmental Change (November 2009) | Smith, L. (Co-Chair), Beer, R. (Co-Chair), Sporns, O., Yu, C. |
| Frey, Seth | Complex Collective Dynamics in Human Higher-Level Reasoning. A Study Over Multiple Methods (August 2013) | Goldstone, R. (Chair), Todd, P., Beer, R., Busemeyer, J. |
