For me, creativeX has powered collaborative experimentation in engineering and the arts. Investigating the same topics together has vitalized and transformed my creative process. By freeing us from disciplinary silos, creativeX reveals new frontiers for joint exploration.
Naomi Ehrich Leonard is an engineer and frequent collaborator across disciplines. A MacArthur Fellow and member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Naomi studies and designs complex dynamical systems with interacting agents—such as animals, robots, or humans—that move, sense, and decide together. Her research helps develop mathematical models of collective dynamics to explore and explain the mechanisms that drive collective intelligence. She is especially interested in the role of feedback response, individual differences, and the communication network in group behavior, learning, and resilience in uncertain and changing environments.
Naomi’s collaborators have included researchers in oceanography, ecology, evolutionary biology, neuroscience, political science, and artists. A former dance student, she is fascinated by the possibilities at the intersection of her research and the arts. In 2010, she co-created, with choreographer Susan Marshall, “Flock Logic,” an exploration of what happens when dancers apply models of flocking birds to their choreography. She collaborated with choreographer Rebecca Lazier and composer Dan Trueman on “There Might Be Others,” a rule-based improvisational dance that premiered in New York City in 2016. Her newest art and engineering project is “Rhythm Bots,” a kinetic sculpture that explores synchrony, rhythmic entrainment, and human-robot interaction.
Naomi is Edwin S. Wilsey Professor and Chair of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University. From 2013 to 2023, she was the director of Princeton’s Council on Science and Technology, where she led the creation of the StudioLab and co-created the course “Transformations in Engineering and the Arts.”
