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Jessica Flack

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Jessica C. Flack
Alma materEmory University
Scientific career
InstitutionsSanta Fe Institute
ThesisRobustness mechanisms in primate societies: A study of conflict management, status signaling, and social power in pigtailed macaque society (2003)
Doctoral advisorFrans de Waal

Jessica C. Flack is a data scientist, evolutionary biologist, and professor at the Santa Fe Institute.

Education and career

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Jessica Flack attended Cornell University for her undergraduate studies and graduated in 1996 with a Bachelor of the Arts (Honors Degree). She received her PhD from Emory University in 2003, where she studied cognitive science, animal behavior and evolutionary theory. Following her Ph.D. she moved to the Santa Fe Institute as a postdoctoral fellow,[1] and studied complexity science, collective behavior, and robustness from 2004 to 2007.[2]

In 2011 she moved to the University of Wisconsin, Madison to help found and direct the Center of Complexity & Collective Computation in the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery.[3] Following her work in Wisconsin, she went back to the Santa Fe Institute and, as of 2022, works there as a professor. Flack also acts as the director for the Collective Computation Group at SFI, and serves as the chair of public events.[2] She performs much of her research in collaboration with co-director David Krakauer.[4]

Research

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Flack is known for her work connecting the behavior of individuals to group activity.[5] She has used animals, particularly macaques monkeys, to examine group behavior.[6][7] Flack's early work examined social rules within chimpanzees.[8] Her work with macaque revealed that fights within a group improve group's ability to make decisions,[9][10] a process Flack calls collective computation.[11] She has also used macaque to examine conflict resolution[12] and social structure.[13]

Selected publications

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  • Flack, Jessica C.; Girvan, Michelle; de Waal, Frans B. M.; Krakauer, David C. (2006). "Policing stabilizes construction of social niches in primates". Nature. 439 (7075): 426–429. Bibcode:2006Natur.439..426F. doi:10.1038/nature04326. ISSN 0028-0836. PMID 16437106. S2CID 4416675.
  • Flack, J.C.; de Waal, F.B.M. (2000-01-01). "'Any animal whatever'. Darwinian building blocks of morality in monkeys and apes". Journal of Consciousness Studies. 7 (1–2): 1–29.
  • Flack, Jessica C. (2012-07-05). "Multiple time-scales and the developmental dynamics of social systems". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 367 (1597): 1802–1810. doi:10.1098/rstb.2011.0214. PMC 3367696. PMID 22641819.

References

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  1. ^ "Jessica Flack". Nature. 439 (7075): xiii. 2006. doi:10.1038/7075xiiia. ISSN 0028-0836. S2CID 4427894.
  2. ^ a b Flack, Jessica (2015). "Jessica C Flack". Collective Computation Group @SFI. Retrieved 2020-12-14.
  3. ^ "Jessica C. Flack". IEEE Xplore. Retrieved 2020-12-14.
  4. ^ Wolcott, Robert C. "Laziness, Technology And Brain Scanning A Billion People: A Conversation With David Krakauer". Forbes. Retrieved 2022-06-06.
  5. ^ Sokol, Joshua (2017-07-06). "How Nature Solves Problems Through Computation". Quanta Magazine. Retrieved 2022-06-06.
  6. ^ Christakis, Nicholas A. (2019). Blueprint : the evolutionary origins of a good society (First ed.). New York, NY. ISBN 978-0-316-23003-2. OCLC 1089804986.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  7. ^ Dugatkin, Lee Alan (2022-04-20). Power in the Wild: The Subtle and Not-So-Subtle Ways Animals Strive for Control over Others. University of Chicago Press. pp. 106–107. ISBN 978-0-226-81595-4.
  8. ^ Flack, Jessica C.; Jeannotte, Lisa A.; de Waal, Frans B. M. (2004). "Play Signaling and the Perception of Social Rules by Juvenile Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)". Journal of Comparative Psychology. 118 (2): 149–159. doi:10.1037/0735-7036.118.2.149. ISSN 1939-2087. PMID 15250802.
  9. ^ Giles, Jim (13 May 2010). "Monkeys' art of war has lessons for human conflict". New Scientist. Retrieved 2022-06-06.
  10. ^ "Monkey fight club helps animals to learn to live together peacefully". CBC. January 19, 2018. Retrieved June 6, 2022.
  11. ^ Brush, Eleanor R.; Krakauer, David C.; Flack, Jessica C. (2018-01-05). "Conflicts of interest improve collective computation of adaptive social structures". Science Advances. 4 (1): e1603311. Bibcode:2018SciA....4.3311B. doi:10.1126/sciadv.1603311. ISSN 2375-2548. PMC 5777398. PMID 29376116.
  12. ^ Flack, Jessica C; Krakauer, David C; de Waal, Frans B. M (2005-06-07). "Robustness mechanisms in primate societies: a perturbation study". Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 272 (1568): 1091–1099. doi:10.1098/rspb.2004.3019. ISSN 0962-8452. PMC 1559816. PMID 16024369.
  13. ^ Flack, Jessica C.; de Waal, Frans B.M.; Krakauer, David C. (2005). "Social Structure, Robustness, and Policing Cost in a Cognitively Sophisticated Species". The American Naturalist. 165 (5): E126–E139. doi:10.1086/429277. ISSN 0003-0147. PMID 15795848. S2CID 1159935.
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