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What can bumblebees teach us about the link between individuality, group behavior, and the brain?

For Matthew Smith, who joined Illinois Institute of Technology as an assistant professor of biology at the beginning of the fall 2024 semester in August, that’s the question at the center of his academic career. He joined Illinois Tech from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 

His desire to better understand how the brain works ultimately led him to studying bumblebee colonies; he’s currently investigating why unique individuals within the colony perceive the same environment in different ways. And how does this form of natural variation differ across regions, and to what degree it can help buffer against ecological stressors.

“There is this innate curiosity of humans to understand how our brain works,” says Smith. “That was part of the motivation, for this question of individuality. I think we all ask these questions: how do I perceive my world different from my friend or my family members? How does that influence my decisions? How does variability in sensory perception impact our behavior?”

At Illinois Tech, Smith will continue to ask questions such as these, furthering his research that is currently focused on understanding how bumblebees respond to anthropogenic stressors (climate change, habitat destruction, increased pesticide use, etc.) both in and out of the lab.

Smith studied biochemistry and molecular biology as an undergraduate student at Michigan State University and continued to earn his masters and Ph.D. in biology at Harvard University—where he studied behavioral neuroscience. Matt credits his Ph.D. advisor, Dr. Benjamin de Bivort, for the introduction into asking questions about the mechanisms of individuality, and for setting an invaluable example of how to ask the right questions and build the tools to answer them.

As a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Smith began to blend his interests in ecology and sustainability with the goal of understanding insect behavior, focusing on bumblebee colonies. Smith empathizes the continued excellence in training he received from his postdoctoral mentor, James Crall.

“I was asking questions about individuality and behavior, and I’m now seeking to understand on a more mechanistic level how individual differences in the brain effect the way that we perceive and respond to our environment,” says Smith. “I focused on bumblebee behavior because you have this really amazing insect system that displays individual and collective behavior— which is important for overcoming stressors, like exposure to pollutants or temperature stress. And understanding pollinator behavior is, of course, important for agriculture systems and food supplies.”

Smith brings with him an impressive toolkit of technical skills, having previously worked as an artificial intelligence resident at Google X. There, he applied machine learning and modern hardware solutions to more efficiently sense and model insect populations.

“Basically, it was an end-to-end kind of process: building up your hardware piece, training your model, deploying new tools out in the field, actually going and surveying an area,” says Smith. “With learning about state of the art tools in computer vision and deep learning tools, I started to apply these methods for classifying behavior in unique ways that allow us to resolve a more detailed summary of individual behavior.” Smith plans to use this toolkit combined with experience from his postdoctoral work to implement more efficient insect sampling around the �糵���� area to ask questions about population dynamics on local scales.

In addition to expanding his toolkit and research program, Smith hopes to make an impact on the Illinois Tech community, both on and off campus.

“Not only students and faculty, but also within the Bronzeville community, I’d love to do more science communication,” says Smith. “How I can bring more of these ecology tools to the community to keep engaging in science communication.”

Having highlighted his academic advisers for providing great examples for him at Michigan State, Harvard, and University of Wisconsin. Smith identified student mentorship as crucial to his work at Illinois Tech.

“The big goal is to create a space where young scientists—or just anyone interested in ecology, biology—can come and learn how to ask good scientific questions, build up their toolkit,” Smith says. “I can mentor them and send them off into the world to continue being great scientists.”