Orit Peleg

Peleg is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science and the BioFrontiers Institute at the University of Colorado Boulder, and an External Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. She draws from a multidisciplinary background: she holds a B.S. in physics and computer science and an M.S. in physics from Bar-Ilan University in Israel. She then moved to Switzerland to earn a Ph.D. in materials science at ETH Zurich, and then held postdoctoral appointments at Harvard University in chemistry and applied mathematics. Her honors include the Schmidt Polymath Award, the Cottrell Scholar Award, a Sloan Research Fellowship in Physics, and recognition as a National Geographic Explorer.

Peleg studies the signals by which living systems communicate. These signals are often striking, forming patterns across a wide range of length and time scales. She seeks general design principles for these signals, asking how they are generated and interpreted, and uses physics, mathematics, and computer science to consider energetic cost, compression (fewest bits), and detectability (signal-to-noise ratio). Her lab focuses on universal problems that most communication systems must solve, whether animate or inanimate: which modality to use, how to integrate signals over space and time, and how to act in response. Using visually traceable systems such as fireflies and honeybee swarms, her lab pairs behavioral assays in the field and in the lab with modeling. Ultimately, the lab aims to chart the grammar of natural signals and the simple rules by which many small voices become a shared decision.