Istvan Karsai

Istvan Karsai

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Address:

Department of Biological Sciences

East Tennessee State University

Box: 70703

Johnson City TN 37614-1710

USA

Email:

ETSU: karsai@etsu.edu

Alternative: ikarsai@hotmail.com

AREAS OF COMPETENCE:

Theoretical Biology, Animal Behavior, Ecology and Evolution (see News section for student projects)

POSITIONS:

Associate Professor of Biological Sciences.
Adjunct Professor of Mathematics.
Associate Member, Graduate Faculty
Executive Director of the Institute of Quantitative Biology
Member of the Center of Excellence in Mathematics and Science Education
Project director of the Symbiosis project (HHMI grant 2006-2010)

FIELD OF CURRENT RESEARCH:

My research is concerned with several levels of organization, from individuals to colonies to populations of colonies. Insect societies offer an example of a biological system in which the component parts (individuals) seem to be fairly simple and there is no hierarchical control among the individuals. The whole colony performs complex, integrated behavior via self-organization processes. I would like to understand how colony organization emerges from simple behavioral rules and how colonies adjust effort to solve colony level tasks. These processes of task allocation require individual insects to make individual decisions based on only local information. The emergence of complex patterns from the interactions of the agents is an exciting and "hot" field in the current science and this interests me far beyond the problems related to insect societies. I have a strong theoretical biology background, but I also enjoy field and lab work, and I believe that the combination of these can lead to very fruitful outcomes. See the News section for other projects and Research interest section for more details.

VERY SHORT STORY:

I was born in Budapest, Hungary, and spent my university years and early scientific career in Hungary. In 1987, I got my M.SC. in biology, in 1990 my PhD in community ecology at Jozsef Attila University, Szeged. Between 1991 and 1996 I worked at the Department of Evolutionary Zoology of Kossuth Lajos University of Debrecen, Hungary on a Hungarian Academy of Sciences Fellowship and a National Scientific grant. The Hungarian Academy of Sciences granted me the post-Ph.D. "C. SC." degree and I became a member of the Public Body in the Neurobiology Study Section of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1997. During this period I intensively collaborated with scientists in Hungary, France, Belgium and USA in the fields of community ecology, evolution, ornithology, molecular biology, conservation biology, ethology, computer science, entomology, phylogeny and physics. Since 1996, I have been working in the U.S.A. at the Ohio State University, University of Missouri - St. Louis, and recently at the East Tennessee State University. Reference: 15th edition of Marquis Who's Who in the World (1998).