Prof. Dr. phil. nat. Dr. h.c. mult. Rüdiger Wehner

Disciplines: Neuro- und Verhaltensbiologie

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Contact

Hirnforschungsinstitut der Universität Zürich
Winterthurerstr. 190
8057 Zürich
Schweiz

Private:
Zürichbergstrasse 130
8044 Zürich
Schweiz

work 0041/44/6354831
fax 0041/44/6355716
home 0041/44/2611374

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Biography

  • Over the past three decades Rüdiger Wehner's research has revolved around the general question how a 0.1-mg brain of a 10-mg insect solves complex computational tasks. In trying to answer this question he focused on the extraordinary navigational skills of visually guided desert ants, Cataglyphis, and did so by interactively combining behavioural experiments with optical, neurophysiological and neuroanatomical studies, computer simulations and, most recently, robotics implementations. This interdisciplinary enterprise has led to the analysis of a number of dedicated neural systems that deal with particular aspects of the ant's overall navigational task. How these neural modules interact provides insights into the computational strategies of neural systems and the insect's "distributed intelligence".
  • Wehner was Andrew Dickson White Professor (at Large) at Cornell University and held many Named Lectureships in the USA. He received the Marcel Benoist Prize (the so-called Swiss Nobel Prize), the Carus Prize of the German Academy of Science (Leopoldina), and the Karl-von-Frisch Prize of the German Zoological Society. Wehner is a Foreign Member of the American Philosophical Society, the German Academy of Sciences, the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the Academia Europea and others.

Kompetenzen:

  • Neuro- und Verhaltensbiologie, Kognitionswissenschaften

Gremien- und Juryzugehörigkeit:

  • Wissenschaftskolleg (Institute for Advanced Study) Berlin, Universität Tübingen

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