Quantitative Approaches to Behavior

This course provides participants with a hands-on introduction to the end-to-end analysis of animal behavior, from processing video recordings to characterizing & modeling behavior. Participants will be introduced to the mathematical tools necessary to understand the basics of tracking, state estimation, and characterization of behavior on a week-to-week basis in the form of lectures. Since these topics cover many different disciplines, the focus will be put on gaining a high-level understanding of each of the topics. Furthermore, various renowned scientists will be invited to present state-of-the-art methods, research, and widely used open-source tools in computer vision, computational ethology, and behavioral sciences. These lectures serve to teach and inspire participants about what current research has to offer, as well as to demonstrate fruitful collaborations in highly interdisciplinary science.