A physicist decides that the best way to make progress on his robotics project is to go to Namibia to study termites.

Every week the Story Collider brings you a true, personal story about science. Find more here: http://storycollider.org/

Justin Werfel is a research scientist at Harvard's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. He received his PhD at MIT and did postdoctoral work at Harvard and the New England Complex Systems Institute. He works on topics including swarm robotics, evolutionary theory, DNA self-assembly, and cancer modeling, and recently published an invited book chapter about the ecology of Fraggle Rock. He's a two-time MassMouth Big Mouth Off finalist and Audience Choice winner.

Justin Werfel: Robotics lessons from termites

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